It was quite dead, a tiny corpse, a mere pinch of black and white
feathers; with its prey--still feebly moving legs and _antennae_--yet
held crosswise in the thorn-small, jet-black beak. What lesson would
He Whose Divine teaching the Aramaic scroll of the Gospel of Matthew,
the Evangelist, set forth,--have drawn from the desire of the insect
for the flowers of delusion, the delirious rush of its swift-winged
captor for illimitable space and aerial freedom--arrested by that
killing crash against a tinted stone?
Poor tiny feathered migrant from--what wild northern homeland? That
of the Alamanni, who built and garrisoned forts of mud and tree-boles
on their Rhine frontiers; fierce red-haired giants, savage
mercenaries of Rome, like the Gauls with their pointed brazen helmets
and painted tunics, covered with cuirasses of leather strengthened
with plates of iron, adorned with armlets, collars and bracelets of
heavy virgin gold, and perched rather than seated on their high
wooden saddles, girthed back on the hindquarters of great horses with
cropped ears.... Or perhaps the bird came from the freezing steppes
of Scythia, peopled by shaggy savages with flat noses, slant eyes,
and hairy legs bowed from continually riding their shaggy little
beasts. Or from Britain, a province of which country Philoremus had
ruled as a pro-consul under Carausius, who, with piratical intentions
of his own, had been sent by Maximianus, co-Emperor with Diocletian,
to suppress the Saxon pirates and the yellow-haired rovers from
Scandinavia.
The swallow, though fully fledged, was young. This must have been
its first day in Egypt. How strange, to have crossed continents and
seas for such an end! thought the Roman Prætor, and then his glance
reverting to the scroll, found there a saying of the Master:
"_Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and not one of them shall
fall to the ground without your Father?_"
What bearing had the words with reference to the dead swallow
stiffening on his warm, living palm? What Divine purpose could be
served by such a waste of effort? What wrong had the innocent
creature done in hunting its insect food? He read on:
"_But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear not therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Whosoever, therefore, shall confess Me before men,
I will also confess him before my Father Who is in Heaven._"
Perhaps the dead swallow had crossed the sea to bring this message to
the disgraced public servant. With the thought a reviving warmth
crept about his chilly heart. He looked downwards, slightly smiling,
from his tribune to a bronze tripod altar placed upon a square of
mosaic in the body of the hall. On either side of the altar a Roman
sword and spear were planted upright. Upon the tripod stood a
silver-gilt chafing-dish containing several sticks of smouldering
charcoal. The dish rested upon a pan of pierced pottery, and near it
were three small vessels respectively containing corn, wine and
incense; also a bowl of lustral water in which was immersed a leafy
olive-twig. A Latin inscription beneath the upper ledge of the
tripod might thus be translated:
"O HOLY SABUS DIUS FIDIUS SEMIPATER, BE PROPITIOUS!"
It was the altar on which oaths were taken; solemnly reconsecrated to
the Sabine deity on each recurring fifth of June. Perhaps if the
thoughts behind the broad brow and the blue eyes of the ex-Prætor had
been rendered into speech, they would have run thus:
"Yesterday at this hour I was wealthy, powerful and dreaded: To-day I
am an outlaw without rights or possessions, waiting the summons to
appear before the judges, who are as likely to condemn me to death by
torture, as to send me to the mines or accord me banishment. And why
has this happened? Answer, Ego of Philoremus! Because something
within me revolts from even the semblance of worship offered to the
deities of Rome. Revengeful, lustful, treacherous as Man; subject
like him to base passions and earthly frailties; stained with
unnatural crimes and vices, I know them to be demons; I will no more
of them!"
"The Pythagorean teachings, the sugared theories of the Platonists,
the philosophy of the Stoics, I have in turn swallowed and rejected
in the reversed condition, as the owl deals with infant moles and
mice! Vainly I have sought refuge in the Eleusinian Mysteries. If
there were but one snake in the sacred basket of the priestess, what
a nest of writhing cobras did I not find behind the Veil! Isis
lured, and I sought her; after long weeks of trials and austerities I
was conducted to the sanctuary. Initiate, O Mother and Queen of
Harlots!--only to be again disillusioned! The religious cults of
Syria and Asia Minor, the philosophical speculations of the
Gymnosophists of Hind beckoned, and I followed, only to be again
betrayed! Yet could I not have concealed my doubts and disgusts,
made my convictions march with my interests? This Voice, speaking
within my bosom, says emphatically No! Some change has taken place
in me, some growth has germinated unnoticed, even as the fields of
the Delta rush into life and verdure, when the garment of water is
withdrawn from the land by the subsidence of the Nile. This is my
right hand with the callosity upon the third joint of the third
finger--that reminds me of the signet that is missing from it--the
thick gold ring--set with a black onyx carved in intaglio with the
head of the club-bearing Hercules,--that was a wedding gift from my
wife. But the Me within me is changed--since yesterday--as though I
had been touched by the living Hand that over three hundred years ago
gave sight to the blind, cleansed the leper, and raised up the dead."
* * * * * * *
A deep voice broke upon the muttered soliloquy. It said in shaken
accents:
"O my master!--" and broke off. For the light of joy that shone in
the clear blue eyes that turned to him was almost too much for
Hazaël's sick heart to bear. He crossed the hall in three long
strides, bent his knee at the foot of the tribune, mounted its steps,
and kissed with his bearded lips the hand that had worn the black
onyx intaglio, even as its owner exclaimed:
"Hazaël! The man I most wanted. Welcome back, good friend, to this
house that was my home!"
"Now may the Holy One be blessed and praised Who has led me back to
Alexandria in time," responded Hazaël, "to serve my most gracious
lord! Well has the Prophet said there is no man so virtuous that he
shall escape calumny. Even Philoremus, I knew had enemies. But that
does not explain--" he gulped,--"the suspension from office, the
soldiers placed on guard over their own commander--or read the
accursed riddle of those seals upon the door!"
"The answer is very simple, my excellent Hazaël," returned Philoremus
with a quizzical smile. He rolled up and thrust the sacred scroll in
the breast of his purple-bordered tunic, and motioned the Jew to seat
himself on a stool beside his chair. "If suspension from office be
public dishonour, at least it means a private leisure seldom enjoyed.
Sit and let us talk, nobody will disturb us! I go before the Prefect
of Alexandria to answer to mine accuser--but not before to-morrow at
the sixth hour."
"Sir--in the name of the Holiest I conjure you to enlighten me! What
is this accusation?" burst forth Hazaël. "Who is the accuser whose
testimony hath such credit as to blacken so great a personage as
yourself in the eyes of men?"
And as the hoarsely-spoken words escaped the Jew's mouth, that was
parched with anguish even more than by the acrid dust of the deserts
which he had traversed, Philoremus answered:
"It is said that I am a Christian and I may not deny it. For the man
who hath accused me is none other than Myself!"
"Woe, woe!" cried the anguish-stricken Hebrew, tearing his beard and
striving to rend the tough material of his garment, while great tears
brimmed his under-eyelids and made furrows in his dusty face. He
checked the violence of his grief, on seeing a slight shade of
disgust pass over the delicate patrician features of the Roman, and
smeared his tears roughly away with the back of a hairy hand.
"Pardon!" he gasped. "Forgive me! ... Pray, tell me more!"
"First drink some of this wine!" said his master, filling a crystal
goblet from a golden-lidded crystal flagon that stood upon the table
conveniently at hand. "A Prætor suspended is as good as hanged--in
the estimation of his slaves and freed-men," went on Philoremus
whimsically, as the Jew gulped down the draught of which he stood in
sore need: "and I make no doubt that my rascals have been robbing
me--from the noon-hour of yesterday--when I received the mandate of
Lollius Maxius, until this moment of thy return. Therefore art thou
thrice welcome. For since the seals were placed, and my own guards
set over me, I have brooded over the trapdoor of this vault that
contains the half-year's tax-money of Egypt--like a hen sitting upon
an addled egg."
"Yes, all through the night," he added, whimsically smiling at the
indignant astonishment of Hazaël, "until this moment. Nor would the
fellows bring me a meal--doubtless they have been too busy plundering
me to feed me. A lump of cheese, a barley-cake and this flagon of
Mareotic, I obtained through one of my Legionaries, who coaxed it out
of the cook!" He added, as the breast of Hazaël heaved, and a hoarse
sound like a sob escaped him: "Now you are come to take charge of the
Egyptian tax-money, O excellent Hazaël! a weight is off my mind. By
Hercules and the Twelve, I find it a relief! Come, be not so cast
down!"
The Jew choked out with difficulty:
"To find you accused--proscribed--perhaps ruined--suffocates me with
indignation!"
"The Gymnosophists," said the ex-Prætor, "who dwelt upon a mountain
in Ethiopia nearly two thousand years ago, and are said to dwell
there still, would have asked you why you are disturbed at this
intelligence? 'Your patron,' they would say, 'who enjoyed the
semblance of Happiness for many years, is now to undergo the
appearance of Misfortune.' Happiness and Misfortune being equally
Illusions, why on earth are you mopping your eyes?"
He drew a perfumed handkerchief of fine Egyptian byssus from a
gold-embroidered wallet of gazelle-leather that hung at his girdle,
and said with a smile as he tossed it to Hazaël: "Waste no more time
in tears for one who sees no cause. We may thank the banquet the
Prefect gives to-night for this opportunity for conversation. May he
bring as fierce an appetite to his tunny pickled with oysters, his
stuffed and roasted sucking-pig and larded quails and ortolans as I
brought to bear on my barley-cake and goat's cheese. Come, my good
fellow, own the truth! Did you never yet suspect me of coquetting
with Christianity? Think! ... Not even when I have gone secretly
forth in a sackcloth gown and cowled mask,--plague or fever having
broken out in the purlieus of the city--or in a time of scarcity,
when famine pinched the poor?"
The Jew shook his shaggy head.
"Whatever I saw was seen and forgotten, not being intended for these
eyes. What presumption had it not been, had I ventured to question
the movements of my patron; who might, the noble lady his wife being
long dead, have entered without grievous sin into some union of the
temporary kind. Besides, you forget, O most excellent! that day now
fifteen years past, when a certain Roman officer of high rank,
disguised as a Frankish traveller, sought adventure in the Jewish
quarter of Alexandria."
"I have not forgotten!" Philoremus chuckled. "We had received
intimation the previous year that the Jews of Alexandria were
prospering exceedingly. Marriages at the synagogues constantly took
place. Births--yours is a prolific race!--inevitably followed each
union. Immigrations from Ethiopia and the towns of the Upper Nile
continually swelled the population.... Trade flourished. Money-bags
grew fat,--and the coins, being put to usury, bred like maggots. Yet
no Jew was other than poor--when it came to paying the tax."
"Most excellent, I have observed it!" acquiesced Hazaël gravely,
wondering that his patron could so forget the present peril in these
memories of the past:
"Therefore, O Hazaël! I came disguised into Jewry with the laudable
desire to find out for myself the condition of the miserable and
oppressed race. It was a Feast Day, and the narrow and winding
streets were foul, and stank exceedingly. But wreaths of anemones
and violets ornamented the windows, while fat and soot from myriads
of twinkling lamps, shed dubious blessings on the heads of the
passers-by. Within each house were displayed rich curtains and
costly carpets from the looms of Persia and Babylon. The goodwives
spread their tables with finest Egyptian linen cloths, and dishes and
cups of silver--indeed--I will not take oath that some were not of
gold! Rich jewels twinkled in their ears, and decked their wigs and
bosoms, and maidens of Israel were among them, gazelle-eyed,
ivory-skinned, beautiful as the virgin daughter of Demeter.... Frown
not, Hazaël, for even when my blood was young I knew how to respect
the virtue of the women of Israel! Later, when I turned about to
retrace my steps, I saw an exceedingly unwashed urchin peering in
with longing eyes at a window I had quitted a moment previously. No
Jewish maid was the object of the young Hazaël's admiration. On the
meagrely-spread table were a dish of lentils dressed in oil and a
common crockery wine-jug; some bread cakes, and a large flank of
tunny in a red pottery dish, swimming in vinegar."
A spark of amusement kindled in the gloomy eyes of Hazaël. The Roman
went on:
"Perhaps that Jewish urchin might have reached twelve years. He was
small for his age, filthy exceedingly, and meagre. And he hugged his
lean stomach, droning a kind of song with the burden: '_I wish!--I
wish!_' ... 'And what dost thou wish?' I asked, coming up unseen
behind him...."
The stern lips under Hazaël's matted beard were parted now in
laughter. He said with a flash of strong white teeth showing in his
dark face:
"And I answered: 'I wish it were Sabbath all the week long!--or that
I had a stomach like a camel's!' And you asked 'Why?' and I
answered, 'Because on Feasts and Sabbaths I may eat my fill at the
tables of the Chosen, while on other days I fight with dogs upon the
quays for the scraps thrown us by sailors and foreigners. Thus I am
empty six days in a week of days, and full to bursting on the
Seventh!' Then you, my lord, said to me,--I can hear your voice this
moment, 'Come with me, Hazaël, small descendant of Abraham, and thou
shalt eat thy fill of lawful food, every day!' And so your greatness
took me thence, and placed me in the household of a Jew who served as
scribe to you,--and stooped to ask my common, sordid story. And I
told thee how, having reached my twelfth year--my good father being a
Rab, an interpreter of the sacred books and a pleader before the
Courts of my people in the town of Acanthon upon the Lower Nile,--was
brought home dead, having been struck upon the forehead by a beam of
cedar borne upon the back of a camel led by a Copt.... And that my
mother, being a poor widow, had married a cousin of my father.
And--that I had found truth in the saying that the breath of a
stepfather chills the broth. _My_ broth was not only cold, but
salted overmuch with the tears of many beatings. Wherefore I ran
away from the village where we dwelt; and begged my way to
Alexandria. That was in the third month _Sivan_, and it was well
into the seventh month, even _Tishri_, before I found," he gulped, "a
friend!"
"And I," said the ex-Prætor, "the most faithful and discreet of
servants, if a little too peppery of temper at times for the comfort
of my freedmen and slaves. You developed with years a genius for the
calling of the scribe, akin to that of Cæsar for the command of
armies. The most disorderly rabble of ciphers that ever disgraced
the pages of a ledger were transformed beneath the hand of Hazaël
into legions worthy of Rome! The advancement for which you thank me
came as the reward of your own labours. My disgrace cannot blight
you,--my fall cannot bring you toppling. All Alexandria knows my
Chief Secretary to be an orthodox Jew and devout Christian-hater! In
how many of the old street-riots between the Chosen and the monks of
Alexandria,--hast thou not played the warrior to the tune of cracked
crowns and broken shin-bones, with that great staff of thine?"
"It is true!" A rush of scarlet invaded the Jew's bearded face,
dyeing his forehead and injecting the whites of his eyes. He dropped
his head upon his breast and stammered:
"It is verily true! Ever since my father--on whom be Peace!--taught
me to stammer Shema I have abominated the Christians. Since his
death, and mine oath, I have rejoiced with the rest of the Chosen at
the revival of persecution, little dreaming that--"
He broke off, convulsed by a shudder that shook him from head to
foot. Then he nerved himself, with an effort that brought
sweat-drops starting upon his cheeks, and temples and forehead, for a
final appeal. "O my loved patron!" he entreated, "hear me! Break
the abominable spell that has--I know not how--constrained you to
embrace a religion only fitted for unlearned fishermen, common
criminals, slaves or unfortunate persons, publicans and sinners--"
"A Prætor of Taxes is a publican, I imagine!..." the Roman official
suggested.
"Even," returned Hazaël, "as Leviathan among the lizards, and the
Lantern of the Pharos beside a farthing candle or a glow-worm's
light. Shall one so illustrious as yourself bow down to the deity
that came out of--Galilee? The son of Joseph the carpenter, speaking
Aramæan,--who called himself, in the madness of delusion or the
blasphemy of possession--the Son of the Most Holy One, the Lord Who
is God! Who preached the sordid creed of poverty, humility and love;
love not only to kindred and friends, but to enemies, betrayers,
traducers, murderers! Who was abandoned in disgust by those who had
followed him, and died a shameful death upon the cross!"
Said the Roman, looking out across the loggia at the blue sky and the
darting swallows:
"When the white-robed flamens of Jupiter Capitolinus, standing upon
the steps of the portico of the temple, bid the Romans come and
celebrate the mysteries of their god, they cry, 'All ye that are pure
of heart and clean of hands, come to the sacrifice!' Yet Jupiter is
neither a pure nor a particularly clean god. And when the
white-robed priestesses of Ceres bear the round basket through the
streets of Alexandria, do they not scream like so many peahens?
'Sinners, away, or keep eyes on the ground! Only the Worthy may dare
to approach us!' Yet those who participate in the Eleusinian
mysteries do not return worthier than they went!"
He poured out a little wine, drank, and said as he set down the
emptied goblet:
"When that young wolf in the Christian fold, the evil presbyter
Arius, gave me the password and the sign, that disguised in the
sackcloth robe and masked cowl of the Parabolani, I might mingle with
them in the meetings of their sodalities and penetrate even to the
house of the Christian Patriarch--the wretch little knew what a
burning curiosity was veiled by my expressed desire for his rascally
aid. For the Master to Whom the glory of the world was a transitory
spectacle--the Teacher Who revealed Himself to the poor and the
humble, and opened His Heart as a Gate of Hope to the sinful and
despised--discovers in His teaching such absolute unworldliness as to
make it starry clear that He came from beyond the stars...."
The ex-Prætor was silent, but his heart added:
"O Divine Man, if only I had known Thee! O Son of God! Who could
take upon Thee the burden of our earthliness!--but to have heard Thy
Voice! but to have seen Thy Face! Perhaps an hour may come--not too
far distant--"
And so wonderful a radiance shone upon the brow and in the eyes of
the speaker, despite the ravages of sleeplessness and anxiety, that
Hazaël was stricken dumb.