_The Granddaughter of Ananus_
[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Activity]
But no man can be a philosopher against nature. With my strength the
desire for exertion returned. My most voluptuous rest became irksome.
Memory would not be restrained; the floodgates of thought opened once
more, and to resist the passion for the world, I was driven to the
drudgery of the hands. I gathered wood for the winter’s fuel, in the
midst of days when the sun poured fire from the heavens; I attempted to
build a hut, beside grottoes that a hermit would love; I trained trees
and cultivated flowers where the soil threw out all that was rich in both
with exhaustless prodigality.
Yet no expedient would appease the passion for the absorbing business
of the world. My bower lost its enchantment; the delight of lying on
beds of violet, and with my eyes fixed on the heavens, wandering away
in rich illusion, palled upon me; the colors of the vision had grown
dim. I no longer saw shapes of beauty winging their way through the
celestial azure; I heard no harmonies of spirits on the midnight winds; I
followed no longer the sun, rushing on his golden chariot-wheels to lands
unstained by human step, or plunged with him at eve into the depths and
ranged the secret wonders of ocean.
[Sidenote: The Island Prison]
Labor in its turn grew irksome. I began to reproach myself for the vulgar
existence which occupied only the inferior portion of my nature; living
only for food, sleep, and shelter, what was I better than the seals
that basked on the shore at my feet? Night, too—that mysterious rest,
interposed for purposes of such varied beneficence: to cool the brain,
fevered by the bustle of the day; to soften mutual hostility, by a pause
to which all alike must yield; to remind our forgetful nature, by a
perpetual semblance, of the time when all things must pass away, and be
silent, and sleep; to sit in judgment on our hearts, and by a decision
which no hypocrisy can disguise, anticipate the punishment of the
villain, as it gives the man of virtue the foretaste of his reward—night
began to exert its old influence over me; and with the strongest
determination to think no more of what had been, I closed my eyes but
to let in the past. I might have said that my true sleep was during the
labors of the day, and my waking when I lay, with my senses sealed, upon
my bed of leaves.
It is impossible to shut up the mind, and I at last abandoned the
struggle. The spell of indolence once broken, I became as restless as
an eagle in a cage. My first object was to discover on what corner of
the land I was thrown. Nothing could be briefer than the circuit of my
island, and nothing less explanatory. It was one of those little alluvial
spots that grow round the first rock that catches the vegetation swept
down by rivers. Ages had gone by, while reed was bound to reed and one
bed of clay laid upon another. The ocean had thrown up its sands on the
shore; the winds had sown tree and herb on the naked sides of the tall
rock; the tree had drawn the cloud, and from its roots let loose the
spring. Cities and empires had perished while this little island was
forming into loveliness. Thus nature perpetually builds, while decay does
its work with the pomp of man. From the shore I saw but a long line of
yellow sand across a broad belt of blue waters. No sight on earth could
less attract the eye or be less indicative of man.
[Sidenote: Unanswered Signals]
Yet within that sandy barrier what wild and wondrous acts might be doing,
and to be done! My mind, with a pinion that no sorrow or bondage could
tame, passed over the desert, and saw the battle, the siege, the bloody
sedition, the long and heart-broken banishment, the fierce conflict
of passions irrestrainable as the tempest, the melancholy ruin of my
country by a judgment powerful as fate, and dreary and returnless as the
grave! But the waters between me and that shore were an obstacle that
no vigor of imagination could overcome. I was too feeble to attempt the
passage by swimming. The opposite coast appeared to be uninhabited,
and the few fishing-boats that passed lazily along this lifeless coast
evidently shunned the island, as I conceived, from some hidden shoal.
I felt myself a prisoner, and the thought irritated me. That ancient
disturbance of my mind, which rendered it so keenly excitable, was born
again; I felt its coming, and knew that my only resource was to escape
from this circumscribing paradise that had become my dungeon. Day after
day I paced the shore, awaking the echoes with my useless shouts, as each
distant sail glided along close to the sandy line that was now to me the
unattainable path of happiness. I made signals from the hill, but I might
as well have summoned the vultures to stop as they flew screaming above
my head to feed on the relics of the Syrian caravans.
What trifles can sometimes stand between man and enjoyment! Wisdom would
have thanked Heaven for the hope of escaping the miseries of life in the
little enchanted round, guarded by that entrenchment of waters, filled
with every production that could delight the sense, and giving to the
spirit, weary of all that the world could offer, the gentle retirement
in which it could gather its remaining strength and make its peace with
Heaven.
I was lying during a fiery noon on the edge of the island, looking toward
the opposite coast, the only object on which I could now bear to look,
when, in the stillness of the hour, I heard a strange mingling of distant
sounds, yet so totally indistinct that, after long listening, I could
conjecture it to be nothing but the rising of the surge. It died away.
But it haunted me: I heard it in fancy. It followed me in the morn, the
noon, and the twilight; in the hour of toil and in the hour when earth
and heaven were soft and silent as an infant’s sleep—when the very spirit
of tranquillity seemed to be folding his dewy wings over the world.
Wearied more with thought than with the daily toil that I imposed on
myself for its cure, I had one night wandered to the shore, and lain down
under the shelter of those thick woven boughs that scarcely let in the
glimpses of the moon. The memory of all whom later chances brought in
my path passed before me—the fate of my gallant kinsmen in Masada, of
the wily Ishmaelite, of the pirate captain, of that unhappy crew whose
danger was my involuntary deed, of my family scattered upon the face of
the world. Arcturus, bending toward the horizon, told me that it was
already midnight, when my reverie was broken by the same sounds that had
once disturbed my day. But they now came full and distinct. I heard the
crashing of heavy axles along the road, the measured tramp of cavalry,
the calls of the clarion and trumpet. They seemed beside me. I started
from my sand, but all around was still. I gazed across the waters; they
were lying, like another sky, reflecting star for star with the blue
immensity above—but on them was no living thing.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Leaves His Shelter]
I had heard of phantom armies traversing the air, but the sky was serene
as crystal. I climbed the hill, upon whose summit I recollected to have
seen the ruins of an altar; gathered the weeds, and lighted them for a
beacon. The flame threw a wide and ruddy reflection on the waters and
the sky. I watched by it until morn. But the sound had died as rapidly
as it rose; and when, with the first pearly tinge of the east, the coast
shaped itself beneath my eye, I saw with bitter disappointment but the
same solitary shore. The idea of another day of suspense was intolerable;
I returned to my place of refuge; gave it that glance of mingled feeling,
without which perhaps no man leaves the shelter which he is never to see
again; collected a few fruits for my sustenance, if I should reach the
desert; and with a resolution to perish, if it so pleased Providence, but
not to return, plunged into the sea.
The channel was even broader than I had calculated by the eye. My limbs
were still enfeebled, but my determination was strength. I was swept
by the current far from the opposite curve of the shore; yet its force
spared mine, and after a long struggle I felt the ground under my feet.
I was overjoyed, tho never was scene less fitted for joy. To the utmost
verge of the view spread the sands, a sullen herbless waste, glowing like
a sheet of brass in the almost vertical sun.
But I was on land! I had accomplished my purpose. Hope, the power of
exertion, the chances of glorious future life, were before me. I was
no longer a prisoner, within the borders of a spot which, for all the
objects of manly existence, might as well have been my grave.
I journeyed on by sun and star in that direction which, to the Jew, is
an instinct—to Jerusalem. Yet what fearful reverses, in this time of
confusion, might not have occurred even there! What certainty could I
have of being spared the bitterest losses, when sorrow and slaughter
reigned through the land? Was I to be protected from the storm, that fell
with such promiscuous fury upon all? I, too, the marked, the victim, the
example to mankind! I looked wistfully back to the isle—that isle of
oblivion.
[Sidenote: The Robber Camp]
While I was pacing the sand that actually scorched my feet, I heard a
cry, and saw on a low range of sand-hills, at some distance, a figure
making violent gestures. Friend or enemy, at least here was man, and I
did not deeply care for the consequences, even of meeting man in his
worst shape. Hunger and thirst might be more formidable enemies in the
end; and I advanced toward the half-naked savage, who, however, ran from
me, crying out louder than ever. I dragged my weary limbs after him,
and at length reached the edge of a little dell in which stood a circle
of tents. I had fallen among the robbers of the desert, but there was
evident confusion in this fragment of a tribe. The camels were in the act
of being loaded; men and women were gathering their household matters
with the haste of terror; and dogs, sheep, camels, and children set up
their voices in a general clamor.
Dreading that I might lose my only chance of refreshment and guidance, I
cried out with all my might, and hastened down toward them; but the sight
of me raised a universal scream, and every living thing took flight,
the horsemen of the colony gallantly leading the way, with a speed that
soon left the pedestrians far in the rear. But their invader conquered
only for food. I entered the first of the deserted tents, and indulged
myself with a full feast of bread, dry and rough as the sand on which it
was baked, and of water, only less bitter than that through which I had
swum. Still, all luxury is relative. To me they were both delicious, and
I thanked at once the good fortune which had provided so prodigally for
those withered monarchs of the sands, and had invested my raggedness with
the salutary terror that gave me the fruits of triumph without the toil.
[Sidenote: A Girl’s Appearance]
At the close of my feast, I uttered a few customary words of
thanksgiving. A cry of joy rang in my ears; I looked round; saw, to my
surprise, a bale of carpets walk forward from a corner of the tent, and
heard a Jewish tongue imploring for life and freedom. I rapidly developed
the speaker, and from this repulsive overture came forth one of the
loveliest young females that I had ever seen. Her story was soon told.
She was the granddaughter of Ananus,[41] the late high priest, one of
the most distinguished of his nation for every lofty quality; but he
had fallen on evil days. His resistance to faction sharpened the dagger
against him, and he perished in one of the merciless feuds of the city.
His only descendant was now before me; she had been sent to claim the
protection of her relatives in the south of Judea. But her escort was
dispersed by an attack of the Arabs, and in the division of the spoil
the sheik of this little encampment obtained her as his share. The
robber merchant was on his way to Cæsarea to sell his prize to the Roman
governor, when my arrival put his caravan to the rout. To my inquiry
into the cause of this singular success, the fair girl answered that the
Arabs had taken me for a supernatural visitant, “probably come to claim
some account of their proceedings in the late expedition.” They had been
first startled by the blaze in the island, which by a tradition of the
desert was said to be the dwelling of forbidden beings. My passage of the
channel was seen, and increased the wonder; my daring to appear alone,
among men whom mankind shunned, completed the belief of my more than
mortal prowess, and the Arabs’ courage abandoned a contest in which “the
least that could happen to them was to be swept into the surge, or tossed
piecemeal upon the winds.”
[Sidenote: The Sheik’s Shekels]
To prevent the effects of their returning intrepidity, no time was to
be lost in our escape. But the sun, which would have scorched anything
but a lizard or a Bedouin to death, kept us prisoners until evening. We
were actively employed in the mean time. The plunder of the horde was
examined, with the curiosity that makes one of the indefeasible qualities
of the fair in all climates; and the young Jewess had not been an inmate
of the tent, nor possessed the brightest eyes among the daughters of
women, for nothing. With an air between play and revenge, she hunted
out every recess in which even the art of Arab thievery could dispose
of its produce; and at length rooted up from a hole in the very darkest
corner of the tent that precious deposit for which the sheik would have
sacrificed all mankind, and even the last hair of his beard—a bag of
shekels. She danced with exultation as she poured the shining contents on
the ground before me.
“If ever Arab regretted his capture,” said she, “this most unlucky
of sheiks shall have cause. But I shall teach him at least one
virtue—repentance to the last hour of his life. I think that I see him at
this moment frightened into a philosopher, and wishing from the bottom of
his soul that he had, for once, resisted the temptation of his trade.”
“But what will you do with the money, my pretty teacher of virtue to
Arabs?”
“Give it to my preserver,” said she, advancing, with a look suddenly
changed from sportiveness to blushing timidity; “give it to him who was
sent by Providence to rescue a daughter of Israel from the hands of the
heathen.”
In the emotion of gratitude to me there was mingled a loftier feeling,
never so lovely as in youth and woman; she threw up a single glance to
heaven, and a tear of piety filled her sparkling eye.
“But, temptress and teacher at once,” said I, “by what right am I to
seize on the sheik’s treasury? May it not diminish my supernatural
dignity with the tribe to be known as a plunderer?”
“Ha!” said she, with a rosy smile; “who is to betray you but your
accomplice? Besides, money is reputation and innocence, wisdom and
virtue, all over the world.”
Touching, with the tip of one slender finger, my arm as it lay folded on
my bosom, she waved the other hand, in attitudes of untaught persuasion.
[Sidenote: A Maiden’s Philosophy]
“Is it not true,” pleaded the pretty creature, “that next to a crime
of our own is the being a party to the crime of others? Now, for what
conceivable purpose could the Arab have collected this money? Not for
food or clothing; for he can eat thistles with his own camel, and nature
has furnished him with clothing as she has furnished the bear. The haik
is only an encumbrance to his impenetrable skin. What, then, can he do
with money but mischief, fit out new expeditions, and capture other
fair maidens, who can not hope to find spirits, good or bad, for their
protectors? If we leave him the means of evil, what is it but doing
the evil ourselves? So,” concluded this resistless pleader, carefully
gathering up the spoil and putting it into my hands, “I have gained my
cause, and have now only to thank my most impartial judge for his patient
hearing.”
There is a magic in woman. No man, not utterly degraded, can listen
without delight to the accents of her guileless heart. Beauty, too, has
a natural power over the mind, and it is right that this should be.
All that overcomes selfishness—the besetting sin of the world—is an
instrument of good. Beauty is but melody of a higher kind, and both alike
soften the troubled and hard nature of man. Even if we looked on lovely
woman but as on a rose, an exquisite production of the summer hours of
life, it would be idle to deny her influence in making even those summer
hours sweeter. But as the companion of the mind, as the very model of a
friendship that no chance can shake, as the pleasant sharer of the heart
of heart, the being to whom man returns after the tumult of the day, like
the worshiper to a secret shrine, to revive his nobler tastes and virtues
at a source pure from the evil of the external world, where shall we find
her equal, or what must be our feelings toward the mighty Disposer of
earth, and all that inhabit it, but of admiration and gratitude for that
disposal which thus combines our fondest happiness with our purest virtue?
END OF BOOK II.
[Illustration: BOOK III]