_The Treatment of a Prisoner_
[Sidenote: A Favored Prisoner]
A troop of cavalry were at the tent door. We set off through the storm,
and a few miles from the camp reached a large building peopled with a
crowd of high functionaries attached to Titus as governor of Judea.
“You must be a prodigious favorite with the general,” said my companion,
as we passed through a range of magnificent rooms furnished with Italian
luxury, “or he would never have sent you here. He had these chambers
prepared for his own residence, but your countrymen have kept him too
busy, and for the last month he is indebted to them for sleeping under
canvas.”
I observed that “peace was the first wish of my heart, but that no people
could be reproached with contending too boldly for freedom.”
“The sentiment is Roman,” was the reply. “But let us come to the fact.
Titus, once fixed in the government, would be worth all the fantasies
that ever fed the declaimers on independence. His character is peace,
and if he ever comes to the empire, he will make the first of monarchs.
You should try him and reap the first fruits of his talent for making
people happy. There, look round this room; you see every panel hung with
a picture, a lyre, or a volume; what does that tell?”
“Certainly not the habits of a camp; yet he is distinguished in the
field.”
[Sidenote: The Emperor]
“No man more. There is not a rider in the legions who can sit a horse or
throw a lance better. He has the talents of a general besides; and more
than all, he has the most iron perseverance that ever dwelt in man. If
the two armies were to slaughter each other until there was but half a
dozen spearmen left between them, Titus would head his remnant and fight
until he died. But whether it is nature or the poison that he drank along
with Britannicus, he wants the eternal vividness of his father. Aye,
there was the soldier for the legions. Look, prince, at this picture,[54]
and tell me what you think of the countenance.”
He drew aside a curtain that covered a superb portrait of the Emperor.
I saw a countenance of incomparable shrewdness, eccentricity, and
self-enjoyment. Every feature told the same tale, from the rounded and
dimpled chin to the broad and deeply veined forehead, overhung with its
rough mat of hair. The hooked nose, the deep wrinkles about the lips, the
thick dark eyebrows, obliquely raised as if some new jest was gathering,
showed the perpetual humorist. But the eye beneath that brow—an orb black
as charcoal, with a spot of intense brightness in the center, as if a
breath could turn that coal into flame—belonged to the supreme sagacity
and determination that had raised Vespasian from a tent to the throne.
The secretary, whose jovial character strongly resembled that of the
object of his panegyric, could not restrain his admiration.
“There,” said he, “is the man who has fought more battles, said more good
things, and taken less physic than any emperor that ever wore the diadem.
I served with him from decurion up to tribune, and he was always the
same—active, brave, and laughing from morn to night. Old as he is, day
never finds him in his bed. He rides, swims, runs, outjests everybody,
and frowns at nothing on earth but an old woman and a physician. He loves
money, ’tis true; yet what he squeezes from the overgrown, he scatters
like a prince. But his mirth is inexhaustible; a little rough, so much
for his camp education; but the most curious mixture of justice, spleen,
and pleasantry in the world.”
My companion’s memory teemed with examples.
[Sidenote: An Emperor’s Traits]
“An Alexandrian governor was ordered to Rome to account for a long
course of extortion; immediately on his arrival he pretended to be taken
violently ill, which, of course, put off the inquiry. The Emperor heard
of this, expressed the greatest interest in so meritorious a public
servant, paid him a visit the next day, disguised as a physician, ordered
him a variety of medicines, which the unfortunate governor was compelled
to take, renewed his visit regularly every day, and every day charged him
an enormous fee! Beggary stared the governor in the face, and never was a
complication of disorders so rapidly cured!
“I was riding out in his attendance one day a few miles from Rome when we
saw a fellow beating his mule cruelly, and on being called to, insisted
on his right to torture the animal. I was indignant and would have
fought the mule’s quarrel. But the Emperor laughed at my zeal, and after
some jesting with the brutal owner, bought the mule, only annexing the
condition that the fellow should lead it to the stable; he actually sent
him with the mule two hundred and fifty miles on foot, to one of his
palaces in Gaul, and with a lictor after him to see that the contract was
fairly performed.
“One of his chamberlains had been soliciting a place about court, for,
as he said, his brother. The Emperor found out the fact that it was for
a stranger, who was to lay down a large sum. He sent for the stranger,
ratified the bargain, gave him the place, and put the money in his own
pocket. The chamberlain was in great alarm on meeting the Emperor some
days after. ‘Your dejection is natural enough,’ said Vespasian, ‘as you
have so lately lost your brother; but, then, you should wish me joy, for
he has become mine!’
“By the altar of Momus and the brass beard of the god Ridiculous, I could
tell you a hundred things of the same kind,” continued the jovial and
inexhaustible secretary; “take but one more.
[Sidenote: Betraying Court Secrets]
“One of our great patricians, an Æmilian, and as vain and insolent a
beast as lives, had ordered a quantity of a particular striped cloth,
which it cost the merchant infinite pains to procure. But the great man’s
taste had altered in the mean time, and he returned the cloth without
ceremony, threatening, besides, that if the merchant made any clamors on
the subject, his payment should be six months’ work in the slave-mill.
The man, on the verge of ruin, came, tearing his hair and bursting with
rage, to lay his complaint before the Emperor, who, however, plainly
told him that there was no remedy, but desired him to send a dress of
the same cloth to the palace. Within the week the patrician was honored
with a message that the Emperor would dine with him, and the message was
accompanied with the dress and an intimation that Vespasian wished to
make it popular. Rome was instantly ransacked for the cloth, but not a
yard of it was to be found but in the merchant’s hands. The patrician’s
household must be equipped in it, cost what it would. The dealer, in
pleasant revenge, charged ten times the value, and his fortune was made
in a day.
“Now Titus, with many a noble quality, is altogether another man. He
abhors the Emperor’s rough-hewn jocularity; he speaks Greek better than
the Emperor does his own tongue; is a poet, and a clever one besides, in
both languages; extemporizes verse with elegance; is no mean performer
on the lyre; sings; is a picture-lover, and so forth. I believe from my
soul that, with all his talents for war and government, he would rather
spend his day over books and his evenings among poets and philosophers,
or telling Italian tales to the ears of some of your brilliant orientals,
than ride over the world at the head of legions. And now,” said my
open-hearted guide, “having betrayed court secrets enough for one day,
I must leave you and return to the camp. Here you will spend your time
as you please until some decision is come to. The household is at your
service, and the officer in command will attend your orders. Farewell!”
Captivity is wretchedness, even if the captive trod on cloth of gold. My
treatment was imperial; a banquet that might have feasted a Roman epicure
was laid before me; a crowd of attendants, sumptuously habited, waited
round the table; music played, perfumes burned, and the whole ceremonial
of princely luxury was gone through, as if Titus were present instead
of his heart-broken prisoner. But to that prisoner bread and water with
freedom would have been the truer luxury.
I wandered through the spacious apartments, dazzled by their splendor
and often ready to ask: “Can man be unhappy in the midst of these
things?” yet answering the question in the pang of heart which they were
so powerless to soothe. I took down the richly blazoned volumes of the
Western poets, and while at every line that I unrolled, I felt how much
richer were their contents than the gold and gems that encased them,
still I felt the inadequacy of even their beauty and vigor to console the
spirit stricken by real calamity. I strayed to the crystal casements,
through which the sunset had begun to pour in a tide of glory. The
landscape was beautiful—a peaceful valley, shut in with lofty eminences,
on whose marble foreheads the sunbeams wrought coronets as colored and
glittering as ever were set with chrysolite and ruby. The snow was
gone as rapidly as it had come, and the green earth, in the freshness
of the bright hour, might almost be said “to laugh and sing.” The air
came, laden with the fragrance of flowers. There was a light and joyous
beauty in even the waving of the shrubs as they shook off the moisture
in sparkles at every wave; birds innumerable broke out into song, and
fluttered their little wet wings with delight in the sunshine; and the
rivulet, still swelled with the snows, ran dimpling and gurgling along
with a music of its own.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Alone]
But the true sadness of the soul is not to be scattered even by the
loveliness of external things. I turned from the sun and nature to fling
myself on my couch and feel that where a man’s treasure is, there his
heart is also.
“What might not in those hours be doing in Jerusalem?” mused I; “what
fanatic violence, personal revenge, or public license might not be let
loose while I was lingering among the costly vanities of the pagan? My
enemy at least was there in the possession of unbridled authority”; and
the thought was in itself a history of evil. “And where was Esther, my
beloved, the child of my soul, the glowing and magnificent-minded being
whose beauty and whose thoughts were scarcely mortal? Might she not be
in the last extremity of suffering, upbraiding me for having forgotten
my child; or in the hands of robbers, dragging her delicate form through
rocks and sands; or dying, without a hand to succor, or a voice to cheer
her in the hour of agony?”
Thought annihilates time, and I had lain one day thus sinking from depth
to depth, I know not how long, until I was roused by the entrance of the
usual endless train of attendants; and the chief steward, a venerable man
of my country, whom Titus had generously continued in the office where
he found him, came to acquaint me that the banquet awaited my pleasure.
The old man wept at the sight of a chieftain of Israel in captivity;
his heart was full, and when I had dismissed the attendants with their
untasted banquet, he gave way to his recollections.
[Sidenote: In the Palace of Ananus]
The palace was once the dwelling of Ananus, the high priest whose death
under the cruelest circumstances was the leading triumph of the factions
and the ruin of Jerusalem. In the very chamber where I sat he had spent
the last day of his life, and left it only to take charge of the Temple
on the fatal night of the assault by the Idumæans. He was wise and
vigorous, but what is the wisdom of man? A storm, memorable in the annals
of devastation, had raged during the night. Ananus, convinced that all
was safe from human hostility in this ravage of the elements, suffered
the wearied citizens to retire from their posts. The gates were opened
by traitors; the Idumæans, furious for blood and spoil, rushed in; the
guard, surprised in their sleep, were massacred; and by daylight eight
thousand corpses lay on the sacred pavements of the Temple, and among
them the noblest and wisest man of Judea, Ananus.
“I found,” said the old man, “the body of my great and good lord under
a heap of dead, but was not suffered to convey it to the tomb of his
fathers, in the valley of Jehoshaphat. I brought his sword and his
phylactery here, and they are now the only memorials of the noblest line
that perished since the Maccabee. In these chambers I have remained
since, and in them it is my hope to die. The palace is large; the Roman
senators and officers reside in another wing, which I have not entered
for years, and shall never enter; mild masters as the Romans have been to
me, I can not bear to see them masters within the walls of a chief of my
country.”
The story of Naomi occurred to me, but she was so much beyond my hope
of discovery that I forbore to renew the old man’s griefs by her name. A
sound of trumpets and the trampling of cavalry were now heard from the
portal.
“It is but the nightly changing of the troops,” said the steward, “or
perhaps the arrival of officers from the camp; they often ride here after
nightfall to supper, spend a few hours, and by daybreak are gone. But of
them and their proceedings I know nothing. No Jew enters, or desires to
enter, the banquet-hall of the enemies of his country.”
[Sidenote: In Closer Confinement]
A knocking at the door interrupted him, and an officer appeared with
an order for the prisoner in the palace to be removed into strict
confinement. The venerable steward gave way to tears at the new offense
to a leader of his people. I felt some surprise, but merely asked what
new alarm had demanded this harsh measure.
“I know no more,” replied the officer, “than that the general has arrived
here a few minutes since, and that as some attempts have been lately made
on his life, the council have thought proper to put the Jewish poniards
as much out of his way as they can. The order is universal, and I am
directed to lead you to your apartment.”
“Then let them look to my escape,” said I; “I thank the council for this
service. While I continued above suspicion, they might have thrown open
every door in their dungeons. But since they thus degrade me, you may
tell them that their walls should be high and their bolts strong to keep
me their prisoner. Lead on, sir.”
[Sidenote: Salathiel’s New Quarters]
The council seemed to have been aware of my opinion, for my new chamber
was in one of the turrets. The lower floor being occupied by the guard,
there could be no undermining; the smallness of the building laid all the
operations of the fugitive open to the sentinel’s eye, and the height was
of itself an obstacle that, even if the bars were forced, might daunt
the adventurer. The steward followed me to my den, wringing his hands.
Yet the little apartment was not incommodious; there were some obvious
attempts at rendering it a fitter place of habitation than usual, and a
more delicate frame than mine might have found indulgence in its carpets
and cushions. Even my solitary hours were not forgotten, and some
handsome volumes from the governor’s library occupied a corner. There was
a lyre, too, if I chose to sing my sorrows, and a gilded chest of wine if
I chose to drink them away. The height was an inconvenience only to my
escape, but a lover of landscape and fresh air would have envied me, for
I had the range of the horizon and the benefit of every breeze from its
four quarters. A Chaldee would have chosen it for his commerce with the
lights of heaven, for every star, from the gorgeous front of Aldebaran to
the minutest diamond spark of the sky, shone there in all its brightness.
And a philosopher would have rejoiced in the secluded comfort of a spot
which, in the officer’s parting pleasantry, was in every sense “so much
above the world.”