“A most rare favor! Let us go on.”

So saying, Ben-Hur rode forward with the guide, one of the

inconveniences of travelling with camels being that it is necessarily

an interdiction of polite conversation.

Afterwhile the party came to a shallow wady, down which, turning to the

right hand, the guide led them. The bed of the cut was somewhat soft

from recent rains, and quite bold in its descent. Momentarily, however,

it widened; and erelong the sides became bluffs ribbed with rocks much

scarred by floods rushing to lower depths ahead. Finally, from a narrow

passage, the travellers entered a spreading vale which was very

delightful; but come upon suddenly from the yellow, unrelieved,

verdureless plain, it had the effect of a freshly discovered Paradise.

The water-channels winding here and there, definable by crisp white

shingling, appeared like threads tangled among islands green with

grasses and fringed with reeds. Up from the final depths of the valley

of the Jordan some venturous oleanders had crept, and with their large

bloom now starred the sunken place. One palm-tree arose in royal

assertion. The bases of the boundary-walls were cloaked with clambering

vines, and under a leaning cliff over on the left the mulberry grove

had planted itself, proclaiming the spring which the party were

seeking. And thither the guide conducted them, careless of whistling

partridges and lesser birds of brighter hues roused whirring from the

reedy coverts.

The water started from a crack in the cliff which some loving hand had

enlarged into an arched cavity. Graven over it in bold Hebraic letters

was the word GOD. The graver had no doubt drunk there, and tarried many

days, and given thanks in that durable form. From the arch the stream

ran merrily over a flag spotted with bright moss, and leaped into a

pool glassy clear; thence it stole away between grassy banks, nursing

the trees before it vanished in the thirsty sand. A few narrow paths

were noticeable about the margin of the pool; otherwise the space

around was untrodden turf, at sight of which the guide was assured of

rest free from intrusion by men. The horses were presently turned

loose, and from the kneeling camel the Ethiopian assisted Balthasar and

Iras; whereupon the old man, turning his face to the east, crossed his

hands reverently upon his breast and prayed.

“Bring me a cup,” Iras said, with some impatience.

From the houdah the slave brought her a crystal goblet; then she said

to Ben-Hur,

“I will be your servant at the fountain.”

They walked to the pool together. He would have dipped the water for

her, but she refused his offer, and kneeling, held the cup to be filled

by the stream itself; nor yet content, when it was cooled and

overrunning, she tendered him the first draught.

“No,” he said, putting the graceful hand aside, and seeing only the

large eyes half hidden beneath the arches of the upraised brows, “be

the service mine, I pray.”

She persisted in having her way.

“In my country, O son of Hur, we have a saying, ‘Better a cupbearer to

the fortunate than minister to a king.’”

“Fortunate!” he said.

There were both surprise and inquiry in the tone of his voice and in

his look, and she said quickly,

“The gods give us success as a sign by which we may know them on our

side. Were you not winner in the Circus?”

His cheeks began to flush.

“That was one sign. There is another. In a combat with swords you slew

a Roman.”

The flush deepened—not so much for the triumphs themselves as the

flattery there was in the thought that she had followed his career with

interest. A moment, and the pleasure was succeeded by a reflection. The

combat, he knew, was matter of report throughout the East; but the name

of the victor had been committed to a very few—Malluch, Ilderim, and

Simonides. Could they have made a confidante of the woman? So with

wonder and gratification he was confused; and seeing it, she arose and

said, holding the cup over the pool,

“O gods of Egypt! I give thanks for a hero discovered—thanks that the

victim in the Palace of Idernee was not my king of men. And so, O holy

gods, I pour and drink.”

Part of the contents of the cup she returned to the stream, the rest

she drank. When she took the crystal from her lips, she laughed at him.

“O son of Hur, is it a fashion of the very brave to be so easily

overcome by a woman? Take the cup now, and see if you cannot find a

happy word in it for me.”

He took the cup, and stooped to refill it.

“A son of Israel has no gods whom he can libate,” he said, playing with

the water to hide his amazement, now greater than before. What more did

the Egyptian know about him? Had she been told of his relations with

Simonides? And there was the treaty with Ilderim—had she knowledge of

that also? He was struck with mistrust. Somebody had betrayed his

secrets, and they were serious. And, besides, he was going to

Jerusalem, just then of all the world the place where such intelligence

possessed by an enemy might be most dangerous to him, his associates,

and the cause. But was she an enemy? It is well for us that, while

writing is slow, thought is instantaneous. When the cup was fairly

cooled, he filled it and arose, saying, with indifference well

affected,

“Most fair, were I an Egyptian or a Greek or a Roman, I would say”—he

raised the goblet overhead as he spoke—“O ye better gods! I give thanks

that there are yet left to the world, despite its wrongs and

sufferings, the charm of beauty and the solace of love, and I drink to

her who best represents them—to Iras, loveliest of the daughters of the

Nile!”

She laid her hand softly upon his shoulder.

“You have offended against the law. The gods you have drunk to are

false gods. Why shall I not tell the rabbis on you?”

“Oh!” he replied, laughing, “that is very little to tell for one who

knows so much else that is really important.”

“I will go further—I will go to the little Jewess who makes the roses

grow and the shadows flame in the house of the great merchant over in

Antioch. To the rabbis I will accuse you of impenitence; to her—”

“Well, to her?”

“I will repeat what you have said to me under the lifted cup, with the

gods for witnesses.”

He was still a moment, as if waiting for the Egyptian to go on. With

quickened fancy he saw Esther at her father’s side listening to the

despatches he had forwarded—sometimes reading them. In her presence he

had told Simonides the story of the affair in the Palace of Idernee.

She and Iras were acquainted; this one was shrewd and worldly; the

other was simple and affectionate, and therefore easily won. Simonides

could not have broken faith—nor Ilderim—for if not held by honor, there

was no one, unless it might be himself, to whom the consequences of

exposure were more serious and certain. Could Esther have been the

Egyptian’s informant? He did not accuse her; yet a suspicion was sown

with the thought, and suspicions, as we all know, are weeds of the mind

which grow of themselves, and most rapidly when least wanted. Before he

could answer the allusion to the little Jewess, Balthasar came to the

pool.

“We are greatly indebted to you, son of Hur,” he said, in his grave

manner. “This vale is very beautiful; the grass, the trees, the shade,

invite us to stay and rest, and the spring here has the sparkle of

diamonds in motion, and sings to me of a loving God. It is not enough

to thank you for the enjoyment we find; come sit with us, and taste our

bread.”

“Suffer me first to serve you.”

With that Ben-Hur filled the goblet, and gave it to Balthasar, who

lifted his eyes in thanksgiving.

Immediately the slave brought napkins; and after laving their hands and

drying them, the three seated themselves in Eastern style under the

tent which years before had served the Wise Men at the meeting in the

Desert. And they ate heartily of the good things taken from the camel’s

pack.

CHAPTER III

The tent was cosily pitched beneath a tree where the gurgle of the

stream was constantly in ear. Overhead the broad leaves hung motionless

on their stems; the delicate reed-stalks off in the pearly haze stood

up arrowy-straight; occasionally a home-returning bee shot humming

athwart the shade, and a partridge creeping from the sedge drank,

whistled to his mate, and ran away. The restfulness of the vale, the

freshness of the air, the garden beauty, the Sabbath stillness, seemed

to have affected the spirits of the elder Egyptian; his voice,

gestures, and whole manner were unusually gentle; and often as he bent

his eyes upon Ben-Hur conversing with Iras, they softened with pity.

“When we overtook you, son of Hur,” he said, at the conclusion of the

repast, “it seemed your face was also turned towards Jerusalem. May I

ask, without offence, if you are going so far?”

“I am going to the Holy City.”

“For the great need I have to spare myself prolonged toil, I will

further ask you, Is there a shorter road than that by Rabbath-Ammon?”

“A rougher route, but shorter, lies by Gerasa and Rabbath-Gilead. It is

the one I design taking.”

“I am impatient,” said Balthasar. “Latterly my sleep has been visited

by dreams—or rather by the same dream in repetition. A voice—it is

nothing more—comes and tells me, ‘Haste—arise! He whom thou hast so

long awaited is at hand.’”

“You mean he that is to be King of the Jews?” Ben-Hur asked, gazing at

the Egyptian in wonder.

“Even so.”

“Then you have heard nothing of him?”

“Nothing, except the words of the voice in the dream.”

“Here, then, are tidings to make you glad as they made me.”

From his gown Ben-Hur drew the letter received from Malluch. The hand

the Egyptian held out trembled violently. He read aloud, and as he read

his feelings increased; the limp veins in his neck swelled and

throbbed. At the conclusion he raised his suffused eyes in thanksgiving

and prayer. He asked no questions, yet had no doubts.

“Thou hast been very good to me, O God,” he said. “Give me, I pray

thee, to see the Saviour again, and worship him, and thy servant will

be ready to go in peace.”

The words, the manner, the singular personality of the simple prayer,

touched Ben-Hur with a sensation new and abiding. God never seemed so

actual and so near by; it was as if he were there bending over them or

sitting at their side—a Friend whose favors were to be had by the most

unceremonious asking—a Father to whom all his children were alike in

love—Father, not more of the Jew than of the Gentile—the Universal

Father, who needed no intermediates, no rabbis, no priests, no

teachers. The idea that such a God might send mankind a Saviour instead

of a king appeared to Ben-Hur in a light not merely new, but so plain

that he could almost discern both the greater want of such a gift and

its greater consistency with the nature of such a Deity. So he could

not resist asking,

“Now that he has come, O Balthasar, you still think he is to be a

Saviour, and not a king?”

Balthasar gave him a look thoughtful as it was tender.

“How shall I understand you?” he asked, in return. “The Spirit, which

was the Star that was my guide of old, has not appeared to me since I

met you in the tent of the good sheik; that is to say, I have not seen

or heard it as formerly. I believe the voice that spoke to me in my

dreams was it; but other than that I have no revelation.”

“I will recall the difference between us,” said Ben-Hur, with

deference. “You were of opinion that he would be a king, but not as

Cæsar is; you thought his sovereignty would be spiritual, not of the

world.”

“Oh yes,” the Egyptian answered; “and I am of the same opinion now. I

see the divergence in our faith. You are going to meet a king of men, I

a Saviour of souls.”

He paused with the look often seen when people are struggling, with

introverted effort, to disentangle a thought which is either too high

for quick discernment or too subtle for simple expression.

“Let me try, O son of Hur,” he said, directly, “and help you to a clear

understanding of my belief; then it may be, seeing how the spiritual

kingdom I expect him to set up can be more excellent in every sense

than anything of mere Cæsarean splendor, you will better understand

the reason of the interest I take in the mysterious person we are going

to welcome.

“I cannot tell you when the idea of a Soul in every man had its origin.

Most likely the first parents brought it with them out of the garden in

which they had their first dwelling. We all do know, however, that it

has never perished entirely out of mind. By some peoples it was lost,

but not by all; in some ages it dulled and faded, in others it was

overwhelmed with doubts; but, in great goodness, God kept sending us at

intervals mighty intellects to argue it back to faith and hope.

“Why should there be a Soul in every man? Look, O son of Hur—for one

moment look at the necessity of such a device. To lie down and die, and

be no more—no more forever—time never was when man wished for such an

end; nor has the man ever been who did not in his heart promise himself

something better. The monuments of the nations are all protests against

nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is

history. The greatest of our Egyptian kings had his effigy cut-out of a

hill of solid rock. Day after day he went with a host in chariots to

see the work; at last it was finished, never effigy so grand, so

enduring: it looked like him—the features were his, faithful even in

expression. Now may we not think of him saying in that moment of pride,

‘Let Death come; there is an after-life for me!’ He had his wish. The

statue is there yet.

“But what is the after-life he thus secured? Only a recollection by

men—a glory unsubstantial as moonshine on the brow of the great bust; a

story in stone—nothing more. Meantime what has become of the king?

There is an embalmed body up in the royal tombs which once was his—an

effigy not so fair to look at as the other out in the Desert. But

where, O son of Hur, where is the king himself? Is he fallen into

nothingness? Two thousand years have gone since he was a man alive as

you and I are. Was his last breath the end of him?

“To say yes would be to accuse God; let us rather accept his better

plan of attaining life after death for us—actual life, I mean—the

something more than a place in mortal memory; life with going and

coming, with sensation, with knowledge, with power and all

appreciation; life eternal in term though it may be with changes of

condition.

“Ask you what God’s plan is? The gift of a Soul to each of us at birth,

with this simple law—there shall be no immortality except through the

Soul. In that law see the necessity of which I spoke.

“Let us turn from the necessity now. A word as to the pleasure there is

in the thought of a Soul in each of us. In the first place, it robs

death of its terrors by making dying a change for the better, and

burial but the planting of a seed from which there will spring a new

life. In the next place, behold me as I am—weak, weary, old, shrunken

in body, and graceless; look at my wrinkled face, think of my failing

senses, listen to my shrilled voice. Ah! what happiness to me in the

promise that when the tomb opens, as soon it will, to receive the

worn-out husk I call myself, the now viewless doors of the universe,

which is but the palace of God, will swing wide ajar to receive me, a

liberated immortal Soul!

“I would I could tell the ecstasy there must be in that life to come!

Do not say I know nothing about it. This much I know, and it is enough

for me—the being a Soul implies conditions of divine superiority. In

such a being there is no dust, nor any gross thing; it must be finer

than air, more impalpable than light, purer than essence—it is life in

absolute purity.

“What now, O son of Hur? Knowing so much, shall I dispute with myself

or you about the unnecessaries—about the form of my soul? Or where it

is to abide? Or whether it eats and drinks? Or is winged, or wears this

or that? No. It is more becoming to trust in God. The beautiful in this

world is all from his hand declaring the perfection of taste; he is the

author of all form; he clothes the lily, he colors the rose, he distils

the dew-drop, he makes the music of nature; in a word, he organized us

for this life, and imposed its conditions; and they are such guaranty

to me that, trustful as a little child, I leave to him the organization

of my Soul, and every arrangement for the life after death. I know he

loves me.”

The good man stopped and drank, and the hand carrying the cup to his

lips trembled; and both Iras and Ben-Hur shared his emotion and

remained silent. Upon the latter a light was breaking. He was beginning

to see, as never before, that there might be a spiritual kingdom of

more import to men than any earthly empire; and that after all a

Saviour would indeed be a more godly gift than the greatest king.

“I might ask you now,” said Balthasar, continuing, “whether this human

life, so troubled and brief, is preferable to the perfect and

everlasting life designed for the Soul? But take the question, and

think of it for yourself, formulating thus: Supposing both to be

equally happy, is one hour more desirable than one year? From that then

advance to the final inquiry, what are threescore and ten years on

earth to all eternity with God? By-and-by, son of Hur, thinking in such

manner, you will be filled with the meaning of the fact I present you

next, to me the most amazing of all events, and in its effects the most

sorrowful; it is that the very idea of life as a Soul is a light almost

gone out in the world. Here and there, to be sure, a philosopher may be

found who will talk to you of a Soul, likening it to a principle; but

because philosophers take nothing upon faith, they will not go the

length of admitting a Soul to be a being, and on that account its

purpose is compressed darkness to them.

“Everything animate has a mind measurable by its wants. Is there to you

no meaning in the singularity that power in full degree to speculate

upon the future was given to man alone? By the sign as I see it, God

meant to make us know ourselves created for another and a better life,

such being in fact the greatest need of our nature. But, alas! into

what a habit the nations have fallen! They live for the day, as if the

present were the all in all, and go about saying, ‘There is no

to-morrow after death; or if there be, since we know nothing about it,

be it a care unto itself.’ So when Death calls them, ‘Come,’ they may

not enter into enjoyment of the glorious after-life because of their

unfitness. That is to say, the ultimate happiness of man was

everlasting life in the society of God. Alas, O son of Hur, that I

should say it! but as well yon sleeping camel constant in such society

as the holiest priests this day serving the highest altars in the most

renowned temples. So much are men given to this lower earthly life! So

nearly have they forgotten that other which is to come!

“See now, I pray you, that which is to be saved to us.

“For my part, speaking with the holiness of truth, I would not give one

hour of life as a Soul for a thousand years of life as a man.”

Here the Egyptian seemed to become unconscious of companionship and

fall away into abstraction.

“This life has its problems,” he said, “and there are men who spend

their days trying to solve them; but what are they to the problems of

the hereafter? What is there like knowing God? Not a scroll of the

mysteries, but the mysteries themselves would for that hour at least

lie before me revealed; even the innermost and most awful—the power

which now we shrink from thought of—which rimmed the void with shores,

and lighted the darkness, and out of nothing appointed the universe.

All places would be opened. I would be filled with divine knowledge; I

would see all glories, taste all delights; I would revel in being. And

if, at the end of the hour, it should please God to tell me, ‘I take

thee into my service forever,’ the furthest limit of desire would be

passed; after which the attainable ambitions of life, and its joys of

whatever kind, would not be so much as the tinkling of little bells.”

Balthasar paused as if to recover from very ecstasy of feeling; and to

Ben-Hur it seemed the speech had been the delivery of a Soul speaking

for itself.

“I pray pardon, son of Hur,” the good man continued, with a bow the

gravity of which was relieved by the tender look that followed it, “I

meant to leave the life of a Soul, its conditions, pleasures,

superiority, to your own reflection and finding out. The joy of the

thought has betrayed me into much speech. I set out to show, though

ever so faintly, the reason of my faith. It grieves me that words are

so weak. But help yourself to truth. Consider first the excellence of

the existence which was reserved for us after death, and give heed to

the feelings and impulses the thought is sure to awaken in you—heed

them, I say, because they are your own Soul astir, doing what it can to

urge you in the right way. Consider next that the afterlife has become

so obscured as to justify calling it a lost light. If you find it,

rejoice, O son of Hur—rejoice as I do, though in beggary of words. For

then, besides the great gift which is to be saved to us, you will have

found the need of a Saviour so infinitely greater than the need of a

king; and he we are going to meet will not longer hold place in your

hope a warrior with a sword or a monarch with a crown.

“A practical question presents itself—How shall we know him at sight?

If you continue in your belief as to his character—that he is to be a

king as Herod was—of course you will keep on until you meet a man

clothed in purple and with a sceptre. On the other hand, he I look for

will be one poor, humble, undistinguished—a man in appearance as other

men; and the sign by which I will know him will be never so simple. He

will offer to show me and all mankind the way to the eternal life; the

beautiful pure Life of the Soul.”

The company sat a moment in silence which was broken by Balthasar.

“Let us arise now,” he said—“let us arise and set forward again. What I

have said has caused a return of impatience to see him who is ever in

my thought; and if I seem to hurry you, O son of Hur—and you, my

daughter—be that my excuse.”

At his signal the slave brought them wine in a skin bottle; and they

poured and drank, and shaking the lap-cloths out arose.

While the slave restored the tent and wares to the box under the

houdah, and the Arab brought up the horses, the three principals laved

themselves in the pool.

In a little while they were retracing their steps back through the

wady, intending to overtake the caravan if it had passed them by.

CHAPTER IV

The caravan, stretched out upon the Desert, was very picturesque; in

motion, however, it was like a lazy serpent. By-and-by its stubborn

dragging became intolerably irksome to Balthasar, patient as he was;

so, at his suggestion, the party determined to go on by themselves.

If the reader be young, or if he has yet a sympathetic recollection of

the romanticisms of his youth, he will relish the pleasure with which

Ben-Hur, riding near the camel of the Egyptians, gave a last look at

the head of the straggling column almost out of sight on the shimmering

plain.

To be definite as may be, and perfectly confidential, Ben-Hur found a

certain charm in Iras’s presence. If she looked down upon him from her

high place, he made haste to get near her; if she spoke to him, his

heart beat out of its usual time. The desire to be agreeable to her was

a constant impulse. Objects on the way, though ever so common, became

interesting the moment she called attention to them; a black swallow in

the air pursued by her pointing finger went off in a halo; if a bit of

quartz or a flake of mica was seen to sparkle in the drab sand under

kissing of the sun, at a word he turned aside and brought it to her;

and if she threw it away in disappointment, far from thinking of the

trouble he had been put to, he was sorry it proved so worthless, and

kept a lookout for something better—a ruby, perchance a diamond. So the

purple of the far mountains became intensely deep and rich if she

distinguished it with an exclamation of praise; and when, now and then,

the curtain of the houdah fell down, it seemed a sudden dulness had

dropped from the sky bedraggling all the landscape. Thus disposed,

yielding to the sweet influence, what shall save him from the dangers

there are in days of the close companionship with the fair Egyptian

incident to the solitary journey they were entered upon?

For that there is no logic in love, nor the least mathematical element,

it is simply natural that she shall fashion the result who has the

wielding of the influence.

To quicken the conclusion, there were signs, too, that she well knew

the influence she was exercising over him. From some place under hand

she had since morning drawn a caul of golden coins, and adjusted it so

the gleaming strings fell over her forehead and upon her cheeks,

blending lustrously with the flowing of her blue-black hair. From the

same safe deposit she had also produced articles of jewelry—rings for

finger and ear, bracelets, a necklace of pearls—also, a shawl

embroidered with threads of fine gold—the effect of all which she

softened with a scarf of Indian lace skillfully folded about her throat

and shoulders. And so arrayed, she plied Ben-Hur with countless

coquetries of speech and manner; showering him with smiles; laughing in

flute-like tremolo—and all the while following him with glances, now

melting-tender, now sparkling-bright. By such play Antony was weaned

from his glory; yet she who wrought his ruin was really not half so

beautiful as this her countrywoman.

And so to them the nooning came, and the evening.

The sun at its going down behind a spur of the old Bashan, left the

party halted by a pool of clear water of the rains out in the Abilene

Desert. There the tent was pitched, the supper eaten, and preparations

made for the night.

The second watch was Ben-Hur’s; and he was standing, spear in hand,

within arm-reach of the dozing camel, looking awhile at the stars, then

over the veiled land. The stillness was intense; only after long spells

a warm breath of wind would sough past, but without disturbing him, for

yet in thought he entertained the Egyptian, recounting her charms, and

sometimes debating how she came by his secrets, the uses she might make

of them, and the course he should pursue with her. And through all the

debate Love stood off but a little way—a strong temptation, the

stronger of a gleam of policy behind. At the very moment he was most

inclined to yield to the allurement, a hand very fair even in the

moonless gloaming was laid softly upon his shoulder. The touch thrilled

him; he started, turned—and she was there.

“I thought you asleep,” he said, presently.

“Sleep is for old people and little children, and I came out to look at

my friends, the stars in the south—those now holding the curtains of

midnight over the Nile. But confess yourself surprised!”

He took the hand which had fallen from his shoulder, and said, “Well,

was it by an enemy?”

“Oh no! To be an enemy is to hate, and hating is a sickness which Isis

will not suffer to come near me. She kissed me, you should know, on the

heart when I was a child.”

“Your speech does not sound in the least like your father’s. Are you

not of his faith?”

“I might have been”—and she laughed low—“I might have been had I seen

what he has. I may be when I get old like him. There should be no

religion for youth, only poetry and philosophy; and no poetry except

such as is the inspiration of wine and mirth and love, and no

philosophy that does not nod excuse for follies which cannot outlive a

season. My father’s God is too awful for me. I failed to find him in

the Grove of Daphne. He was never heard of as present in the atria of

Rome. But, son of Hur, I have a wish.”

“A wish! Where is he who could say it no?”

“I will try you.”

“Tell it then.”

“It is very simple. I wish to help you.”

She drew closer as she spoke.

He laughed, and replied, lightly, “O Egypt!—I came near saying dear

Egypt!—does not the sphinx abide in your country?”

“Well?”

“You are one of its riddles. Be merciful, and give me a little clew to

help me understand you. In what do I need help? And how can you help

me?”

She took her hand from him, and, turning to the camel, spoke to it

endearingly, and patted its monstrous head as it were a thing of

beauty.

“O thou last and swiftest and stateliest of the herds of Job! Sometimes

thou, too, goest stumbling, because the way is rough and stony and the

burden grievous. How is it thou knowest the kind intent by a word; and

always makest answer gratefully, though the help offered is from a

woman? I will kiss thee, thou royal brute!”—she stooped and touched its

broad forehead with her lips, saying immediately, “because in thy

intelligence there is no suspicion!”

And Ben-Hur, restraining himself, said calmly, “The reproach has not

failed its mark, O Egypt! I seem to say thee no; may it not be because

I am under seal of honor, and by my silence cover the lives and

fortunes of others?”

“May be!” she said, quickly. “It is so.”

He shrank a step, and asked, his voice sharp with amazement, “What all

knowest thou?”

She answered, after a laugh,

“Why do men deny that the senses of women are sharper than theirs? Your

face has been under my eyes all day. I had but to look at it to see you

bore some weight in mind; and to find the weight, what had I to do more

than recall your debates with my father? Son of Hur!”—she lowered her

voice with singular dexterity, and, going nearer, spoke so her breath

was warm upon his cheek—“son of Hur! he thou art going to find is to be

King of the Jews, is he not?”

His heart beat fast and hard.

“A King of the Jews like Herod, only greater,” she continued.

He looked away—into the night, up to the stars; then his eyes met hers,

and lingered there; and her breath was on his lips, so near was she.

“Since morning,” she said, further, “we have been having visions. Now

if I tell you mine, will you serve me as well? What! silent still?”

She pushed his hand away, and turned as if to go; but he caught her,

and said, eagerly, “Stay—stay and speak!”

She went back, and with her hand upon his shoulder, leaned against him;

and he put his arm around her, and drew her close, very close; and in

the caress was the promise she asked.

“Speak, and tell me thy visions, O Egypt, dear Egypt! A prophet—nay,

not the Tishbite, not even the Lawgiver—could have refused an asking of

thine. I am at thy will. Be merciful—merciful, I pray.”

The entreaty passed apparently unheard, for looking up and nestling in

his embrace, she said, slowly, “The vision which followed me was of

magnificent war—war on land and sea—with clashing of arms and rush of

armies, as if Cæsar and Pompey were come again, and Octavius and

Antony. A cloud of dust and ashes arose and covered the world, and Rome

was not any more; all dominion returned to the East; out of the cloud

issued another race of heroes; and there were vaster satrapies and

brighter crowns for giving away than were ever known. And, son of Hur,

while the vision was passing, and after it was gone, I kept asking

myself, ‘What shall he not have who served the King earliest and

best?’”

Again Ben-Hur recoiled. The question was the very question which had

been with him all day. Presently he fancied he had the clew he wanted.

“So,” he said, “I have you now. The satrapies and crowns are the things

to which you would help me. I see, I see! And there never was such

queen as you would be, so shrewd, so beautiful, so royal—never! But,

alas, dear Egypt! by the vision as you show it me the prizes are all of

war, and you are but a woman, though Isis did kiss you on the heart.

And crowns are starry gifts beyond your power of help, unless, indeed,

you have a way to them more certain than that of the sword. If so, O

Egypt, Egypt, show it me, and I will walk in it, if only for your

sake.”

She removed his arm, and said, “Spread your cloak upon the sand—here,

so I can rest against the camel. I will sit, and tell you a story which

came down the Nile to Alexandria, where I had it.”

He did as she said, first planting the spear in the ground near by.

“And what shall I do?” he said, ruefully, when she was seated. “In

Alexandria is it customary for the listeners to sit or stand?”

From the comfortable place against the old domestic she answered,

laughing, “The audiences of story-tellers are wilful, and sometimes

they do as they please.”

Without more ado he stretched himself upon the sand, and put her arm

about his neck.

“I am ready,” he said.

And directly she began:

HOW THE BEAUTIFUL CAME TO THE EARTH.

“You must know, in the first place, that Isis was—and, for that matter,

she may yet be—the most beautiful of deities; and Osiris, her husband,

though wise and powerful, was sometimes stung with jealousy of her, for

only in their loves are the gods like mortals.

“The palace of the Divine Wife was of silver, crowning the tallest

mountain in the moon, and thence she passed often to the sun, in the

heart of which, a source of eternal light, Osiris kept his palace of

gold too shining for men to look at.

“One time—there are no days with the gods—while she was full pleasantly

with him on the roof of the golden palace, she chanced to look, and

afar, just on the line of the universe, saw Indra passing with an army

of simians, all borne upon the backs of flying eagles. He, the Friend

of Living Things—so with much love is Indra called—was returning from

his final war with the hideous Rakshakas—returning victorious; and in

his suite were Rama, the hero, and Sita, his bride, who, next to Isis

herself, was the very most beautiful. And Isis arose, and took off her

girdle of stars, and waved it to Sita—to Sita, mind you—waved it in

glad salute. And instantly, between the marching host and the two on

the golden roof, a something as of night fell, and shut out the view;

but it was not night—only the frown of Osiris.

“It happened the subject of his speech that moment was such as none

else than they could think of; and he arose, and said, majestically,

‘Get thee home. I will do the work myself. To make a perfectly happy

being I do not need thy help. Get thee gone.’

“Now Isis had eyes large as those of the white cow which in the temple

eats sweet grasses from the hands of the faithful even while they say

their prayers; and her eyes were the color of the cows, and quite as

tender. And she too arose and said, smiling as she spoke, so her look

was little more than the glow of the moon in the hazy harvest-month,

‘Farewell, good my lord. You will call me presently, I know; for

without me you cannot make the perfectly happy creature of which you

were thinking, any more’—and she stopped to laugh, knowing well the

truth of the saying—‘any more, my lord, than you yourself can be

perfectly happy without me.’

“‘We will see,’ he said.

“And she went her way, and took her needles and her chair, and on the

roof of the silver palace sat watching and knitting.

“And the will of Osiris, at labor in his mighty breast, was as the

sound of the mills of all the other gods grinding at once, so loud that

the near stars rattled like seeds in a parched pod; and some dropped

out and were lost. And while the sound kept on she waited and knit; nor

lost she ever a stitch the while.

“Soon a spot appeared in the space over towards the sun; and it grew

until it was great as the moon, and then she knew a world was intended;

but when, growing and growing, at last it cast her planet in the shade,

all save the little point lighted by her presence, she knew how very

angry he was; yet she knit away, assured that the end would be as she

had said.

“And so came the earth, at first but a cold gray mass hanging listless

in the hollow void. Later she saw it separate into divisions; here a

plain, there a mountain, yonder a sea, all as yet without a sparkle.

And then, by a river-bank, something moved; and she stopped her

knitting for wonder. The something arose, and lifted its hands to the

sun in sign of knowledge whence it had its being. And this First Man

was beautiful to see. And about him were the creations we call

nature—the grass, the trees, birds, beasts, even the insects and

reptiles.

“And for a time the man went about happy in his life: it was easy to

see how happy he was. And in the lull of the sound of the laboring will

Isis heard a scornful laugh, and presently the words, blown across from

the sun,

“‘Thy help, indeed! Behold a creature perfectly happy!’

“And Isis fell to knitting again, for she was patient as Osiris was

strong; and if he could work, she could wait; and wait she did, knowing

that mere life is not enough to keep anything content.

“And sure enough. Not long until the Divine Wife could see a change in

the man. He grew listless, and kept to one place prone by the river,

and looked up but seldom, and then always with a moody face. Interest

was dying in him. And when she made sure of it, even while she was

saying to herself, ‘The creature is sick of his being,’ there was a

roar of the creative will at work again, and in a twinkling the earth,

theretofore all a thing of coldest gray, flamed with colors; the

mountains swam in purple, the plains bearing grass and trees turned

green, the sea blue, and the clouds varied infinitely.”

And the man sprang up and clapped his hands, for he was cured and happy

again.

“And Isis smiled, and knit away, saying to herself, ‘It was well

thought, and will do a little while; but mere beauty in a world is not

enough for such a being. My lord must try again.’

“With the last word, the thunder of the will at work shook the moon,

and, looking, Isis dropped her knitting and clapped her hands; for

theretofore everything on the earth but the man had been fixed to a

given place; now all living, and much that was not living, received the

gift of Motion. The birds took to wing joyously; beasts great and small

went about, each in its way; the trees shook their verdurous branches,

nodding to the enamoured winds; the rivers ran to the seas, and the

seas tossed in their beds and rolled in crested waves, and with surging

and ebbing painted the shores with glistening foam; and over all the

clouds floated like sailed ships unanchored.

“And the man rose up happy as a child; whereat Osiris was pleased, so

that he shouted, ‘Ha, ha! See how well I am doing without thee!’

“The good wife took up her work, and answered ever so quietly, ‘It was

well thought, my lord—ever so well thought—and will serve awhile.’

“And as before, so again. The sight of things in motion became to the

man as of course. The birds in flight, the rivers running, the seas in

tumult of action, ceased to amuse him, and he pined again even worse.

“And Isis waited, saying to herself, ‘Poor creature! He is more

wretched than ever.’

“And, as if he heard the thought, Osiris stirred, and the noise of his

will shook the universe; the sun in its central seat alone stood firm.

And Isis looked, but saw no change; then while she was smiling, assured

that her lord’s last invention was sped, suddenly the creature arose,

and seemed to listen; and his face brightened, and he clapped his hands

for joy, for Sounds were heard the first time on earth—sounds

dissonant, sounds harmonious. The winds murmured in the trees; the

birds sang, each kind a song of its own, or chattered in speech; the

rivulets running to the rivers became so many harpers with harps of

silver strings all tinkling together; and the rivers running to the

seas surged on in solemn accord, while the seas beat the land to a tune

of thunder. There was music, music everywhere, and all the time; so the

man could not but be happy.

“Then Isis mused, thinking how well, how wondrous well, her lord was

doing; but presently she shook her head: Color, Motion, Sound—and she

repeated them slowly—there was no element else of beauty except Form

and Light, and to them the earth had been born. Now, indeed, Osiris was

done; and if the creature should again fall off into wretchedness, her

help must be asked; and her fingers flew—two, three, five, even ten

stitches she took at once.

“And the man was happy a long time—longer than ever before; it seemed,

indeed, he would never tire again. But Isis knew better; and she waited

and waited, nor minded the many laughs flung at her from the sun; she

waited and waited, and at last saw signs of the end. Sounds became

familiar to him, and in their range, from the chirruping of the cricket

under the roses to the roar of the seas and the bellow of the clouds in

storm, there was not anything unusual. And he pined and sickened, and

sought his place of moping by the river, and at last fell down

motionless.

“Then Isis in pity spoke.

“‘My lord,’ she said, ‘the creature is dying.’

“But Osiris, though seeing it all, held his peace; he could do no more.

“‘Shall I help him?’ she asked.

“Osiris was too proud to speak.

“Then Isis took the last stitch in her knitting, and gathering her work

in a roll of brilliance flung it off—flung it so it fell close to the

man. And he, hearing the sound of the fall so near by, looked up, and

lo! a Woman—the First Woman—was stooping to help him! She reached a

hand to him; he caught it and arose; and nevermore was miserable, but

evermore happy.”

“Such, O son of Hur! is the genesis of the beautiful, as they tell it

on the Nile.”

She paused.

“A pretty invention, and cunning,” he said, directly; “but it is

imperfect. What did Osiris afterwards?”

“Oh yes,” she replied. “He called the Divine Wife back to the sun, and

they went on all pleasantly together, each helping the other.”

“And shall I not do as the first man?”

He carried the hand resting upon his neck to his lips. “In love—in

love!” he said.

His head dropped softly into her lap.

“You will find the King,” she said, placing her other hand caressingly

upon his head. “You will go on and find the King and serve him. With

your sword you will earn his richest gifts; and his best soldier will

be my hero.”

He turned his face, and saw hers close above. In all the sky there was

that moment nothing so bright to him as her eyes, enshadowed though

they were. Presently he sat up, and put his arms about her, and kissed

her passionately, saying, “O Egypt, Egypt! If the King has crowns in

gift, one shall be mine; and I will bring it and put it here over the

place my lips have marked. You shall be a queen—my queen—no one more

beautiful! And we will be ever, ever so happy!”

“And you will tell me everything, and let me help you in all?” she

said, kissing him in return.

The question chilled his fervor.

“Is it not enough that I love you?” he asked.

“Perfect love means perfect faith,” she replied. “But never mind—you

will know me better.”

She took her hand from him and arose.

“You are cruel,” he said.

Moving away, she stopped by the camel, and touched its front face with

her lips.

“O thou noblest of thy kind!—that, because there is no suspicion in thy

love.”

An instant, and she was gone.

CHAPTER V

The third day of the journey the party nooned by the river Jabbok,

where there were a hundred or more men, mostly of Peraea, resting

themselves and their beasts. Hardly had they dismounted, before a man

came to them with a pitcher of water and a bowl, and offered them

drink; as they received the attention with much courtesy, he said,

looking at the camel, “I am returning from the Jordan, where just now

there are many people from distant parts, travelling as you are,

illustrious friend; but they had none of them the equal of your servant

here. A very noble animal. May I ask of what breed he is sprung?”

Balthasar answered, and sought his rest; but Ben-Hur, more curious,

took up the remark.

“At what place on the river are the people?” he asked.

“At Bethabara.”

“It used to be a lonesome ford,” said Ben-Hur. “I cannot understand how

it can have become of such interest.”

“I see,” the stranger replied; “you, too, are from abroad, and have not

heard the good tidings.”

“What tidings?”

“Well, a man has appeared out of the wilderness—a very holy man—with

his mouth full of strange words, which take hold of all who hear them.

He calls himself John the Nazarite, son of Zacharias, and says he is

the messenger sent before the Messiah.”

Even Iras listened closely while the man continued:

“They say of this John that he has spent his life from childhood in a

cave down by En-Gedi, praying and living more strictly than the

Essenes. Crowds go to hear him preach. I went to hear him with the

rest.”

“Have all these, your friends, been there?”

“Most of them are going; a few are coming away.”

“What does he preach?”

“A new doctrine—one never before taught in Israel, as all say. He calls

it repentance and baptism. The rabbis do not know what to make of him;

nor do we. Some have asked him if he is the Christ, others if he is

Elias; but to them all he has the answer, ‘I am the voice of one crying

in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord!’”

At this point the man was called away by his friends; as he was going,

Balthasar spoke.

“Good stranger!” he said, tremulously, “tell us if we shall find the

preacher at the place you left him.”

“Yes, at Bethabara.”

“Who should this Nazarite be?” said Ben-Hur to Iras, “if not the herald

of our King?”

In so short a time he had come to regard the daughter as more

interested in the mysterious personage he was looking for than the aged

father! Nevertheless, the latter with a positive glow in his sunken

eyes half arose, and said,

“Let us make haste. I am not tired.”

They turned away to help the slave.

There was little conversation between the three at the stopping-place

for the night west of Ramoth-Gilead.

“Let us arise early, son of Hur,” said the old man. “The Saviour may

come, and we not there.”

“The King cannot be far behind his herald,” Iras whispered, as she

prepared to take her place on the camel.

“To-morrow we will see!” Ben-Hur replied, kissing her hand.

Next day about the third hour, out of the pass through which, skirting

the base of Mount Gilead, they had journeyed since leaving Ramoth, the

party came upon the barren steppe east of the sacred river. Opposite

them they saw the upper limit of the old palm lands of Jericho,

stretching off to the hill-country of Judea. Ben-Hur’s blood ran

quickly, for he knew the ford was close at hand.

“Content you, good Balthasar,” he said; “we are almost there.”

The driver quickened the camel’s pace. Soon they caught sight of booths

and tents and tethered animals; and then of the river, and a multitude

collected down close by the bank, and yet another multitude on the

western shore. Knowing that the preacher was preaching, they made

greater haste; yet, as they were drawing near, suddenly there was a

commotion in the mass, and it began to break up and disperse.

They were too late!

“Let us stay here,” said Ben-Hur to Balthasar, who was wringing his

hands. “The Nazarite may come this way.”

The people were too intent upon what they had heard, and too busy in

discussion, to notice the new-comers. When some hundreds were gone by,

and it seemed the opportunity to so much as see the Nazarite was lost

to the latter, up the river not far away they beheld a person coming

towards them of such singular appearance they forgot all else.

Outwardly the man was rude and uncouth, even savage. Over a thin, gaunt

visage of the hue of brown parchment, over his shoulders and down his

back below the middle, in witch-like locks, fell a covering of

sun-scorched hair. His eyes were burning-bright. All his right side was

naked, and of the color of his face, and quite as meagre; a shirt of

the coarsest camel’s-hair—coarse as Bedouin tent-cloth—clothed the rest

of his person to the knees, being gathered at the waist by a broad

girdle of untanned leather. His feet were bare. A scrip, also of

untanned leather, was fastened to the girdle. He used a knotted staff

to help him forward. His movement was quick, decided, and strangely

watchful. Every little while he tossed the unruly hair from his eyes,

and peered round as if searching for somebody.

The fair Egyptian surveyed the son of the Desert with surprise, not to

say disgust. Presently, raising the curtain of the houdah, she spoke to

Ben-Hur, who sat his horse near by.

“Is that the herald of thy King?”

“It is the Nazarite,” he replied, without looking up.

In truth, he was himself more than disappointed. Despite his

familiarity with the ascetic colonists in En-Gedi—their dress, their

indifference to all worldly opinion, their constancy to vows which gave

them over to every imaginable suffering of body, and separated them

from others of their kind as absolutely as if they had not been born

like them—and notwithstanding he had been notified on the way to look

for a Nazarite whose simple description of himself was a Voice from the

Wilderness—still Ben-Hur’s dream of the King who was to be so great and

do so much had colored all his thought of him, so that he never doubted

to find in the forerunner some sign or token of the goodliness and

royalty he was announcing. Gazing at the savage figure before him, the

long trains of courtiers whom he had been used to see in the thermae

and imperial corridors at Rome arose before him, forcing a comparison.

Shocked, shamed, bewildered, he could only answer,

“It is the Nazarite.”

With Balthasar it was very different. The ways of God, he knew, were

not as men would have them. He had seen the Saviour a child in a

manger, and was prepared by his faith for the rude and simple in

connection with the Divine reappearance. So he kept his seat, his hands

crossed upon his breast, his lips moving in prayer. He was not

expecting a king.

In this time of such interest to the new-comers, and in which they were

so differently moved, another man had been sitting by himself on a

stone at the edge of the river, thinking yet, probably, of the sermon

he had been hearing. Now, however, he arose, and walked slowly up from

the shore, in a course to take him across the line the Nazarite was

pursuing and bring him near the camel.

And the two—the preacher and the stranger—kept on until they came, the

former within twenty yards of the animal, the latter within ten feet.

Then the preacher stopped, and flung the hair from his eyes, looked at

the stranger, threw his hands up as a signal to all the people in

sight; and they also stopped, each in the pose of a listener; and when

the hush was perfect, slowly the staff in the Nazarite’s right hand

came down and pointed to the stranger.

All those who before were but listeners became watchers also.

At the same instant, under the same impulse, Balthasar and Ben-Hur

fixed their gaze upon the man pointed out, and both took the same

impression, only in different degree. He was moving slowly towards them

in a clear space a little to their front, a form slightly above the

average in stature, and slender, even delicate. His action was calm and

deliberate, like that habitual to men much given to serious thought

upon grave subjects; and it well became his costume, which was an

undergarment full-sleeved and reaching to the ankles, and an outer robe

called the talith; on his left arm he carried the usual handkerchief

for the head, the red fillet swinging loose down his side. Except the

fillet and a narrow border of blue at the lower edge of the talith, his

attire was of linen yellowed with dust and road stains. Possibly the

exception should be extended to the tassels, which were blue and white,

as prescribed by law for rabbis. His sandals were of the simplest kind.

He was without scrip or girdle or staff.

These points of appearance, however, the three beholders observed

briefly, and rather as accessories to the head and face of the man,

which—especially the latter—were the real sources of the spell they

caught in common with all who stood looking at him.

The head was open to the cloudless light, except as it was draped with

hair long and slightly waved, and parted in the middle, and auburn in

tint, with a tendency to reddish golden where most strongly touched by

the sun. Under a broad, low forehead, under black well arched brows,

beamed eyes dark-blue and large, and softened to exceeding tenderness

by lashes of the great length sometimes seen on children, but seldom,

if ever, on men. As to the other features, it would have been difficult

to decide whether they were Greek or Jewish. The delicacy of the

nostrils and mouth was unusual to the latter type; and when it was

taken into account with the gentleness of the eyes, the pallor of the

complexion, the fine texture of the hair, and the softness of the

beard, which fell in waves over his throat to his breast, never a

soldier but would have laughed at him in encounter, never a woman who

would not have confided in him at sight, never a child that would not,

with quick instinct, have given him its hand and whole artless trust;

nor might any one have said he was not beautiful.

The features, it should be further said, were ruled by a certain

expression which, as the viewer chose, might with equal correctness

have been called the effect of intelligence, love, pity, or sorrow;

though, in better speech, it was a blending of them all—a look easy to

fancy as the mark of a sinless soul doomed to the sight and

understanding of the utter sinfulness of those among whom it was

passing; yet withal no one could have observed the face with a thought

of weakness in the man; so, at least, would not they who know that the

qualities mentioned—love, sorrow, pity—are the results of a

consciousness of strength to bear suffering oftener than strength to

do; such has been the might of martyrs and devotees and the myriads

written down in saintly calendars. And such, indeed, was the air of

this one.

Slowly he drew near—nearer the three.

Now Ben-Hur, mounted and spear in hand, was an object to claim the

glance of a king; yet the eyes of the man approaching were all the time

raised above him—and not to Iras, whose loveliness has been so often

remarked, but to Balthasar, the old and unserviceable.

The hush was profound.

Presently the Nazarite, still pointing with his staff, cried, in a loud

voice,

“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!”

The many standing still, arrested by the action of the speaker, and

listening for what might follow, were struck with awe by words so

strange and past their understanding; upon Balthasar they were

overpowering. He was there to see once more the Redeemer of men. The

faith which had brought him the singular privileges of the time long

gone abode yet in his heart; and if now it gave him a power of vision

above that of his fellows—a power to see and know him for whom he was

looking—better than calling the power a miracle, let it be thought of

as the faculty of a soul not yet entirely released from the divine

relations to which it had been formerly admitted, or as the fitting

reward of a life in that age so without examples of holiness—a life

itself a miracle. The ideal of his faith was before him, perfect in

face, form, dress, action, age; and he was in its view, and the view

was recognition. Ah, now if something should happen to identify the

stranger beyond all doubt!

And that was what did happen.

Exactly at the fitting moment, as if to assure the trembling Egyptian,

the Nazarite repeated the outcry,

“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!”

Balthasar fell upon his knees. For him there was no need of

explanation; and as if the Nazarite knew it, he turned to those more

immediately about him staring in wonder, and continued:

“This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred

before me, for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should

be manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. I saw

the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.

And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same

said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and

remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.

And I saw and bare record, that this”—he paused, his staff still

pointing at the stranger in the white garments, as if to give a more

absolute certainty to both his words and the conclusions intended—“I

bare record, THAT THIS IS THE SON OF GOD!”

“It is he, it is he!” Balthasar cried, with upraised tearful eyes. Next

moment he sank down insensible.

In this time, it should be remembered, Ben-Hur was studying the face of

the stranger, though with an interest entirely different. He was not

insensible to its purity of feature, and its thoughtfulness,

tenderness, humility, and holiness; but just then there was room in his

mind for but one thought—Who is this man? And what? Messiah or king?

Never was apparition more unroyal. Nay, looking at that calm, benignant

countenance, the very idea of war and conquest, and lust of dominion,

smote him like a profanation. He said, as if speaking to his own heart,

Balthasar must be right and Simonides wrong. This man has not come to

rebuild the throne of Solomon; he has neither the nature nor the genius

of Herod; king he may be, but not of another and greater than Rome.

It should be understood now that this was not a conclusion with

Ben-Hur, but an impression merely; and while it was forming, while yet

he gazed at the wonderful countenance, his memory began to throe and

struggle. “Surely,” he said to himself, “I have seen the man; but where

and when?” That the look, so calm, so pitiful, so loving, had somewhere

in a past time beamed upon him as that moment it was beaming upon

Balthasar became an assurance. Faintly at first, at last a clear light,

a burst of sunshine, the scene by the well at Nazareth what time the

Roman guard was dragging him to the galleys returned, and all his being

thrilled. Those hands had helped him when he was perishing. The face

was one of the pictures he had carried in mind ever since. In the

effusion of feeling excited, the explanation of the preacher was lost

by him, all but the last words—words so marvellous that the world yet

rings with them:

“—this is the SON OF GOD!”

Ben-Hur leaped from his horse to render homage to his benefactor; but

Iras cried to him, “Help, son of Hur, help, or my father will die!”

He stopped, looked back, then hurried to her assistance. She gave him a

cup; and leaving the slave to bring the camel to its knees, he ran to

the river for water. The stranger was gone when he came back.

At last Balthasar was restored to consciousness. Stretching forth his

hands, he asked, feebly, “Where is he?”

“Who?” asked Iras.

An intense instant interest shone upon the good man’s face, as if a

last wish had been gratified, and he answered,

“He—the Redeemer—the Son of God, whom I have seen again.”

“Believest thou so?” Iras asked in a low voice of Ben-Hur.

“The time is full of wonders; let us wait,” was all he said.

And next day while the three were listening to him, the Nazarite broke

off in mid-speech, saying reverently, “Behold the Lamb of God!”

Looking to where he pointed, they beheld the stranger again. As Ben-Hur

surveyed the slender figure, and holy beautiful countenance

compassionate to sadness, a new idea broke upon him.

“Balthasar is right—so is Simonides. May not the Redeemer be a king

also?”

And he asked one at his side, “Who is the man walking yonder?”

The other laughed mockingly, and replied,

“He is the son of a carpenter over in Nazareth.”

BOOK EIGHTH

“Who could resist? Who in this universe?

She did so breathe ambrosia, so immerse

My fine existence in a golden clime.

She took me like a child of suckling-time,

And cradled me in roses. Thus condemn’d,

The current of my former life was stemm’d,

And to this arbitrary queen of sense

I bow’d a tranced vassal.”—KEATS, Endymion.

“I am the resurrection and the life.”

CHAPTER I

“Esther—Esther! Speak to the servant below that he may bring me a cup

of water.”

“Would you not rather have wine, father?”

“Let him bring both.”

This was in the summer-house upon the roof of the old palace of the

Hurs in Jerusalem. From the parapet overlooking the court-yard Esther

called to a man in waiting there; at the same moment another

man-servant came up the steps and saluted respectfully.

“A package for the master,” he said, giving her a letter enclosed in

linen cloth, tied and sealed.

For the satisfaction of the reader, we stop to say that it is the

twenty-first day of March, nearly three years after the annunciation of

the Christ at Bethabara.

In the meanwhile, Malluch, acting for Ben-Hur, who could not longer

endure the emptiness and decay of his father’s house, had bought it

from Pontius Pilate; and, in process of repair, gates, courts, lewens,

stairways, terraces, rooms, and roof had been cleansed and thoroughly

restored; not only was there no reminder left of the tragic

circumstances so ruinous to the family, but the refurnishment was in a

style richer than before. At every point, indeed, a visitor was met by

evidences of the higher tastes acquired by the young proprietor during

his years of residence in the villa by Misenum and in the Roman

capital.

Now it should not be inferred from this explanation that Ben-Hur had

publicly assumed ownership of the property. In his opinion, the hour

for that was not yet come. Neither had he yet taken his proper name.

Passing the time in the labors of preparation in Galilee, he waited

patiently the action of the Nazarene, who became daily more and more a

mystery to him, and by prodigies done, often before his eyes, kept him

in a state of anxious doubt both as to his character and mission.

Occasionally he came up to the Holy City, stopping at the paternal

house; always, however, as a stranger and a guest.

These visits of Ben-Hur, it should also be observed, were for more than

mere rest from labor. Balthasar and Iras made their home in the palace;

and the charm of the daughter was still upon him with all its original

freshness, while the father, though feebler in body, held him an

unflagging listener to speeches of astonishing power, urging the

divinity of the wandering miracle-worker of whom they were all so

expectant.

As to Simonides and Esther, they had arrived from Antioch only a few

days before this their reappearance—a wearisome journey to the

merchant, borne, as he had been, in a palanquin swung between two

camels, which, in their careening, did not always keep the same step.

But now that he was come, the good man, it seemed, could not see enough

of his native land. He delighted in the perch upon the roof, and spent

most of his day hours there seated in an arm-chair, the duplicate of

that one kept for him in the cabinet over the store-house by the

Orontes. In the shade of the summer-house he could drink fully of the

inspiring air lying lightly upon the familiar hills; he could better

watch the sun rise, run its course, and set as it used to in the

far-gone, not a habit lost; and with Esther by him it was so much

easier up there close to the sky, to bring back the other Esther, his

love in youth, his wife, dearer growing with the passage of years. And

yet he was not unmindful of business. Every day a messenger brought him

a despatch from Sanballat, in charge of the big commerce behind; and

every day a despatch left him for Sanballat with directions of such

minuteness of detail as to exclude all judgment save his own, and all

chances except those the Almighty has refused to submit to the most

mindful of men.

As Esther started in return to the summer-house, the sunlight fell

softly upon the dustless roof, showing her a woman now—small, graceful

in form, of regular features, rosy with youth and health, bright with

intelligence, beautiful with the outshining of a devoted nature—a woman

to be loved because loving was a habit of life irrepressible with her.

She looked at the package as she turned, paused, looked at it a second

time more closely than at first; and the blood rose reddening her

cheeks—the seal was Ben-Hur’s. With quickened steps she hastened on.

Simonides held the package a moment while he also inspected the seal.

Breaking it open, he gave her the roll it contained.

“Read,” he said.

His eyes were upon her as he spoke, and instantly a troubled expression

fell upon his own face.

“You know who it is from, I see, Esther.”

“Yes—from—our master.”

Though the manner was halting, she met his gaze with modest sincerity.

Slowly his chin sank into the roll of flesh puffed out under it like a

cushion.

“You love him, Esther,” he said, quietly.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Have you thought well of what you do?”

“I have tried not to think of him, father, except as the master to whom

I am dutifully bound. The effort has not helped me to strength.”

“A good girl, a good girl, even as thy mother was,” he said, dropping

into reverie, from which she roused him by unrolling the paper.

“The Lord forgive me, but—but thy love might not have been vainly given

had I kept fast hold of all I had, as I might have done—such power is

there in money!”

“It would have been worse for me had you done so, father; for then I

had been unworthy a look from him, and without pride in you. Shall I

not read now?”

“In a moment,” he said. “Let me, for your sake, my child, show you the

worst. Seeing it with me may make it less terrible to you. His love,

Esther, is all bestowed.”

“I know it,” she said, calmly.

“The Egyptian has him in her net,” he continued. “She has the cunning

of her race, with beauty to help her—much beauty, great cunning; but,

like her race again, no heart. The daughter who despises her father

will bring her husband to grief.”

“Does she that?”

Simonides went on:

“Balthasar is a wise man who has been wonderfully favored for a

Gentile, and his faith becomes him; yet she makes a jest of it. I heard

her say, speaking of him yesterday, ‘The follies of youth are

excusable; nothing is admirable in the aged except wisdom, and when

that goes from them, they should die.’ A cruel speech, fit for a Roman.

I applied it to myself, knowing a feebleness like her father’s will

come to me also—nay, it is not far off. But you, Esther, will never say

of me—no, never—‘It were better he were dead.’ No, your mother was a

daughter of Judah.”

With half-formed tears, she kissed him, and said, “I am my mother’s

child.”

“Yes, and my daughter—my daughter, who is to me all the Temple was to

Solomon.”

After a silence, he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and resumed: “When

he has taken the Egyptian to wife, Esther, he will think of you with

repentance and much calling of the spirit; for at last he will awake to

find himself but the minister of her bad ambition. Rome is the centre

of all her dreams. To her he is the son of Arrius the duumvir, not the

son of Hur, Prince of Jerusalem.”

Esther made no attempt to conceal the effect of these words.

“Save him, father! It is not too late!” she said, entreatingly.

He answered, with a dubious smile, “A man drowning may be saved; not so

a man in love.”

“But you have influence with him. He is alone in the world. Show him

his danger. Tell him what a woman she is.”

“That might save him from her. Would it give him to you, Esther? No,”

and his brows fell darkly over his eyes. “I am a servant, as my fathers

were for generations; yet I could not say to him, ‘Lo, master, my

daughter! She is fairer than the Egyptian, and loves thee better!’ I

have caught too much from years of liberty and direction. The words

would blister my tongue. The stones upon the old hills yonder would

turn in their beds for shame when I go out to them. No, by the

patriarchs, Esther, I would rather lay us both with your mother to

sleep as she sleeps!”

A blush burned Esther’s whole face.

“I did not mean you to tell him so, father. I was concerned for him

alone—for his happiness, not mine. Because I have dared love him, I

shall keep myself worthy his respect; so only can I excuse my folly.

Let me read his letter now.”

“Yes, read it.”

She began at once, in haste to conclude the distasteful subject.

“Nisan, 8th day.

“On the road from Galilee to Jerusalem.

“The Nazarene is on the way also. With him, though without his

knowledge, I am bringing a full legion of mine. A second legion

follows. The Passover will excuse the multitude. He said upon setting

out, ‘We will go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by

the prophets concerning me shall be accomplished.’

“Our waiting draws to an end.

“In haste.

“Peace to thee, Simonides.

“BEN-HUR.”

Esther returned the letter to her father, while a choking sensation

gathered in her throat. There was not a word in the missive for her—not

even in the salutation had she a share—and it would have been so easy

to have written “and to thine, peace.” For the first time in her life

she felt the smart of a jealous sting.

“The eighth day,” said Simonides, “the eighth day; and this, Esther,

this is the—”

“The ninth,” she replied.

“Ah, then, they may be in Bethany now.”

“And possibly we may see him to-night,” she added, pleased into

momentary forgetfulness.

“It may be, it may be! To-morrow is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and

he may wish to celebrate it; so may the Nazarene; and we may see him—we

may see both of them, Esther.”

At this point the servant appeared with the wine and water. Esther

helped her father, and in the midst of the service Iras came upon the

roof.

To the Jewess the Egyptian never appeared so very, very beautiful as at

that moment. Her gauzy garments fluttered about her like a little cloud

of mist; her forehead, neck, and arms glittered with the massive

jewelry so affected by her people. Her countenance was suffused with

pleasure. She moved with buoyant steps, and self-conscious, though

without affectation. Esther at the sight shrank within herself, and

nestled closer to her father.

“Peace to you, Simonides, and to the pretty Esther peace,” said Iras,

inclining her head to the latter. “You remind me, good master—if I may

say it without offence-you remind me of the priests in Persia who climb

their temples at the decline of day to send prayers after the departing

sun. Is there anything in the worship you do not know, let me call my

father. He is Magian-bred.”

“Fair Egyptian,” the merchant replied, nodding with grave politeness,

“your father is a good man who would not be offended if he knew I told

you his Persian lore is the least part of his wisdom.”

Iras’s lip curled slightly.

“To speak like a philosopher, as you invite me,” she said, “the least

part always implies a greater. Let me ask what you esteem the greater

part of the rare quality you are pleased to attribute to him.”

Simonides turned upon her somewhat sternly.

“Pure wisdom always directs itself towards God; the purest wisdom is

knowledge of God; and no man of my acquaintance has it in higher

degree, or makes it more manifest in speech and act, than the good

Balthasar.”

To end the parley, he raised the cup and drank.

The Egyptian turned to Esther a little testily.

“A man who has millions in store, and fleets of ships at sea, cannot

discern in what simple women like us find amusement. Let us leave him.

By the wall yonder we can talk.”

They went to the parapet then, stopping at the place where, years

before, Ben-Hur loosed the broken tile upon the head of Gratus.

“You have not been to Rome?” Iras began, toying the while with one of

her unclasped bracelets.

“No,” said Esther, demurely.

“Have you not wished to go?”

“No.”

“Ah, how little there has been of your life!”

The sigh that succeeded the exclamation could not have been more

piteously expressive had the loss been the Egyptian’s own. Next moment

her laugh might have been heard in the street below; and she said “Oh,

oh, my pretty simpleton! The half-fledged birds nested in the ear of

the great bust out on the Memphian sands know nearly as much as you.”

Then, seeing Esther’s confusion, she changed her manner, and said in a

confiding tone, “You must not take offence. Oh no! I was playing. Let

me kiss the hurt, and tell you what I would not to any other—not if

Simbel himself asked it of me, offering a lotus-cup of the spray of the

Nile!”

Another laugh, masking excellently the look she turned sharply upon the

Jewess, and she said, “The King is coming.”

Esther gazed at her in innocent surprise.

“The Nazarene,” Iras continued—“he whom our fathers have been talking

about so much, whom Ben-Hur has been serving and toiling for so

long”—her voice dropped several tones lower—“the Nazarene will be here

to-morrow, and Ben-Hur to-night.”

Esther struggled to maintain her composure, but failed: her eyes fell,

the tell-tale blood surged to her cheek and forehead, and she was saved

sight of the triumphant smile that passed, like a gleam, over the face

of the Egyptian.

“See, here is his promise.”

And from her girdle she took a roll.

“Rejoice with me, O my friend! He will be here tonight! On the Tiber

there is a house, a royal property, which he has pledged to me; and to

be its mistress is to be—”

A sound of some one walking swiftly along the street below interrupted

the speech, and she leaned over the parapet to see. Then she drew back,

and cried, with hands clasped above her head, “Now blessed be Isis!

’Tis he—Ben-Hur himself! That he should appear while I had such thought

of him! There are no gods if it be not a good omen. Put your arms about

me, Esther—and a kiss!”

The Jewess looked up. Upon each cheek there was a glow; her eyes

sparkled with a light more nearly of anger than ever her nature emitted

before. Her gentleness had been too roughly overridden. It was not

enough for her to be forbidden more than fugitive dreams of the man she

loved; a boastful rival must tell her in confidence of her better

success, and of the brilliant promises which were its rewards. Of her,

the servant of a servant, there had been no hint of remembrance; this

other could show his letter, leaving her to imagine all it breathed. So

she said,

“Dost thou love him so much, then, or Rome so much better?”

The Egyptian drew back a step; then she bent her haughty head quite

near her questioner.

“What is he to thee, daughter of Simonides?”

Esther, all thrilling, began, “He is my—”

A thought blasting as lightning stayed the words: she paled, trembled,

recovered, and answered,

“He is my father’s friend.”

Her tongue had refused to admit her servile condition.

Iras laughed more lightly than before.

“Not more than that?” she said. “Ah, by the lover-gods of Egypt, thou

mayst keep thy kisses—keep them. Thou hast taught me but now that there

are others vastly more estimable waiting me here in Judea; and”—she

turned away, looking back over her shoulder—“I will go get them. Peace

to thee.”

Esther saw her disappear down the steps, when, putting her hands over

her face, she burst into tears so they ran scalding through her

fingers—tears of shame and choking passion. And, to deepen the paroxysm

to her even temper so strange, up with a new meaning of withering force

rose her father’s words—“Thy love might not have been vainly given had

I kept fast hold of all I had, as I might have done.”

And all the stars were out, burning low above the city and the dark

wall of mountains about it, before she recovered enough to go back to

the summer-house, and in silence take her accustomed place at her

father’s side, humbly waiting his pleasure. To such duty it seemed her

youth, if not her life, must be given. And, let the truth be said, now

that the pang was spent, she went not unwillingly back to the duty.

CHAPTER II

An hour or thereabouts after the scene upon the roof, Balthasar and

Simonides, the latter attended by Esther, met in the great chamber of

the palace; and while they were talking, Ben-Hur and Iras came in

together.

The young Jew, advancing in front of his companion, walked first to

Balthasar, and saluted him, and received his reply; then he turned to

Simonides, but paused at sight of Esther.

It is not often we have hearts roomy enough for more than one of the

absorbing passions at the same time; in its blaze the others may

continue to live, but only as lesser lights. So with Ben-Hur, much

study of possibilities, indulgence of hopes and dreams, influences born

of the condition of his country, influences more direct—that of Iras,

for example—had made him in the broadest worldly sense ambitious; and

as he had given the passion place, allowing it to become a rule, and

finally an imperious governor, the resolves and impulses of former days

faded imperceptibly out of being, and at last almost out of

recollection. It is at best so easy to forget our youth; in his case it

was but natural that his own sufferings and the mystery darkening the

fate of his family should move him less and less as, in hope at least,

he approached nearer and nearer the goals which occupied all his

visions. Only let us not judge him too harshly.

He paused in surprise at seeing Esther a woman now, and so beautiful;

and as he stood looking at her a still voice reminded him of broken

vows and duties undone: almost his old self returned.

For an instant he was startled; but recovering, he went to Esther, and

said, “Peace to thee, sweet Esther—peace; and thou, Simonides”—he

looked to the merchant as he spoke—“the blessing of the Lord be thine,

if only because thou hast been a good father to the fatherless.”

Esther heard him with downcast face; Simonides answered,

“I repeat the welcome of the good Balthasar, son of Hur—welcome to thy

father’s house; and sit, and tell us of thy travels, and of thy work,

and of the wonderful Nazarene—who he is, and what. If thou art not at

ease here, who shall be? Sit, I pray—there, between us, that we may all

hear.”

Esther stepped out quickly and brought a covered stool, and set it for

him.

“Thanks,” he said to her, gratefully.

When seated, after some other conversation, he addressed himself to the

men.

“I have come to tell you of the Nazarene.”

The two became instantly attentive.

“For many days now I have followed him with such watchfulness as one

may give another upon whom he is waiting so anxiously. I have seen him

under all circumstances said to be trials and tests of men; and while I

am certain he is a man as I am, not less certain am I that he is

something more.”

“What more?” asked Simonides.

“I will tell you—”

Some one coming into the room interrupted him; he turned, and arose

with extended hands.

“Amrah! Dear old Amrah!” he cried.

She came forward; and they, seeing the joy in her face, thought not

once how wrinkled and tawny it was. She knelt at his feet, clasped his

knees, and kissed his hands over and over; and when he could he put the

lank gray hair from her cheeks, and kissed them, saying, “Good Amrah,

have you nothing, nothing of them—not a word—not one little sign?”

Then she broke into sobbing which made him answer plainer even than the

spoken word.

“God’s will has been done,” he next said, solemnly, in a tone to make

each listener know he had no hope more of finding his people. In his

eyes there were tears which he would not have them see, because he was

a man.

When he could again, he took seat, and said, “Come, sit by me,

Amrah—here. No? then at my feet; for I have much to say to these good

friends of a wonderful man come into the world.”

But she went off, and stooping with her back to the wall, joined her

hands before her knees, content, they all thought, with seeing him.

Then Ben-Hur, bowing to the old men, began again:

“I fear to answer the question asked me about the Nazarene without

first telling you some of the things I have seen him do; and to that I

am the more inclined, my friends, because to-morrow he will come to the

city, and go up into the Temple, which he calls his father’s house,

where, it is further said, he will proclaim himself. So, whether you

are right, O Balthasar, or you, Simonides, we and Israel shall know

to-morrow.”

Balthasar rubbed his hands tremulously together, and asked, “Where

shall I go to see him?”

“The pressure of the crowd will be very great. Better, I think, that

you all go upon the roof above the cloisters—say upon the Porch of

Solomon.”

“Can you be with us?”

“No,” said Ben-Hur, “my friends will require me, perhaps, in the

procession.”

“Procession!” exclaimed Simonides. “Does he travel in state?”

Ben-Hur saw the argument in mind.

“He brings twelve men with him, fishermen, tillers of the soil, one a

publican, all of the humbler class; and he and they make their journeys

on foot, careless of wind, cold, rain, or sun. Seeing them stop by the

wayside at nightfall to break bread or lie down to sleep, I have been

reminded of a party of shepherds going back to their flocks from

market, not of nobles and kings. Only when he lifts the corners of his

handkerchief to look at some one or shake the dust from his head, I am

made known he is their teacher as well as their companion—their

superior not less than their friend.

“You are shrewd men,” Ben-Hur resumed, after a pause. “You know what

creatures of certain master motives we are, and that it has become

little less than a law of our nature to spend life in eager pursuit of

certain objects; now, appealing to that law as something by which we

may know ourselves, what would you say of a man who could be rich by

making gold of the stones under his feet, yet is poor of choice?”

“The Greeks would call him a philosopher,” said Iras.

“Nay, daughter,” said Balthasar, “the philosophers had never the power

to do such thing.”

“How know you this man has?”

Ben-Hur answered quickly, “I saw him turn water into wine.”

“Very strange, very strange,” said Simonides; “but it is not so strange

to me as that he should prefer to live poor when he could be so rich.

Is he so poor?”

“He owns nothing, and envies nobody his owning. He pities the rich. But

passing that, what would you say to see a man multiply seven loaves and

two fishes, all his store, into enough to feed five thousand people,

and have full baskets over? That I saw the Nazarene do.”

“You saw it?” exclaimed Simonides.

“Ay, and ate of the bread and fish.”

“More marvellous still,” Ben-Hur continued, “what would you say of a

man in whom there is such healing virtue that the sick have but to

touch the hem of his garment to be cured, or cry to him afar? That,

too, I witnessed, not once, but many times. As we came out of Jericho

two blind men by the wayside called to the Nazarene, and he touched

their eyes, and they saw. So they brought a palsied man to him, and he

said merely, ‘Go unto thy house,’ and the man went away well. What say

you to these things?”

The merchant had no answer.

“Think you now, as I have heard others argue, that what I have told you

are tricks of jugglery? Let me answer by recalling greater things which

I have seen him do. Look first to that curse of God—comfortless, as you

all know, except by death—leprosy.”

At these words Amrah dropped her hands to the floor, and in her

eagerness to hear him half arose.

“What would you say,” said Ben-Hur, with increased earnestness—“what

would you say to have seen that I now tell you? A leper came to the

Nazarene while I was with him down in Galilee, and said, ‘Lord, if thou

wilt, thou canst make me clean.’ He heard the cry, and touched the

outcast with his hand, saying, ‘Be thou clean;’ and forthwith the man

was himself again, healthful as any of us who beheld the cure, and we

were a multitude.”

Here Amrah arose, and with her gaunt fingers held the wiry locks from

her eyes. The brain of the poor creature had long since gone to heart,

and she was troubled to follow the speech.

“Then, again,” said Ben-Hur, without stop, “ten lepers came to him one

day in a body, and falling at his feet, called out—I saw and heard it

all—called out, ‘Master, Master, have mercy upon us!’ He told them,

‘Go, show yourselves to the priest, as the law requires; and before you

are come there ye shall be healed.’”

“And were they?”

“Yes. On the road going their infirmity left them, so that there was

nothing to remind us of it except their polluted clothes.”

“Such thing was never heard before—never in all Israel!” said

Simonides, in undertone.

And then, while he was speaking, Amrah turned away, and walked

noiselessly to the door, and went out; and none of the company saw her

go.

“The thoughts stirred by such things done under my eyes I leave you to

imagine,” said Ben-Hur, continuing; “but my doubts, my misgivings, my

amazement, were not yet at the full. The people of Galilee are, as you

know, impetuous and rash; after years of waiting their swords burned

their hands; nothing would do them but action. ‘He is slow to declare

himself; let us force him,’ they cried to me. And I too became

impatient. If he is to be king, why not now? The legions are ready. So

as he was once teaching by the seaside we would have crowned him

whether or not; but he disappeared, and was next seen on a ship

departing from the shore. Good Simonides, the desires that make other

men mad—riches, power, even kingships offered out of great love by a

great people—move this one not at all. What say you?”

The merchant’s chin was low upon his breast; raising his head, he

replied, resolutely, “The Lord liveth, and so do the words of the

prophets. Time is in the green yet; let to-morrow answer.”

“Be it so,” said Balthasar, smiling.

And Ben-Hur said, “Be it so.” Then he went on: “But I have not yet

done. From these things, not too great to be above suspicion by such as

did not see them in performance as I did, let me carry you now to

others infinitely greater, acknowledged since the world began to be

past the power of man. Tell me, has any one to your knowledge ever

reached out and taken from Death what Death has made his own? Who ever

gave again the breath of a life lost? Who but—”

“God!” said Balthasar, reverently.

Ben-Hur bowed.

“O wise Egyptian! I may not refuse the name you lend me. What would

you—or you, Simonides—what would you either or both have said had you

seen as I did, a man, with few words and no ceremony, without effort

more than a mother’s when she speaks to wake her child asleep, undo the

work of Death? It was down at Nain. We were about going into the gate,

when a company came out bearing a dead man. The Nazarene stopped to let

the train pass. There was a woman among them crying. I saw his face

soften with pity. He spoke to her, then went and touched the bier, and

said to him who lay upon it dressed for burial, ‘Young man, I say unto

thee, Arise!’ And instantly the dead sat up and talked.”

“God only is so great,” said Balthasar to Simonides.

“Mark you,” Ben-Hur proceeded, “I do but tell you things of which I was

a witness, together with a cloud of other men. On the way hither I saw

another act still more mighty. In Bethany there was a man named

Lazarus, who died and was buried; and after he had lain four days in a

tomb, shut in by a great stone, the Nazarene was shown to the place.

Upon rolling the stone away, we beheld the man lying inside bound and

rotting. There were many people standing by, and we all heard what the

Nazarene said, for he spoke in a loud voice: ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ I

cannot tell you my feelings when in answer, as it were, the man arose

and came out to us with all his cerements about him. ‘Loose him,’ said

the Nazarene next, ‘loose him, and let him go.’ And when the napkin was

taken from the face of the resurrected, lo, my friends! the blood ran

anew through the wasted body, and he was exactly as he had been in life

before the sickness that took him off. He lives yet, and is hourly seen

and spoken to. You may go see him to-morrow. And now, as nothing more

is needed for the purpose, I ask you that which I came to ask, it being

but a repetition of what you asked me, O Simonides, What more than a

man is this Nazarene?”

The question was put solemnly, and long after midnight the company sat

and debated it; Simonides being yet unwilling to give up his

understanding of the sayings of the prophets, and Ben-Hur contending

that the elder disputants were both right—that the Nazarene was the

Redeemer, as claimed by Balthasar, and also the destined king the

merchant would have.

“To-morrow we will see. Peace to you all.”

So saying, Ben-Hur took his leave, intending to return to Bethany.

CHAPTER III

The first person to go out of the city upon the opening of the Sheep’s

Gate next morning was Amrah, basket on arm. No questions were asked her

by the keepers, since the morning itself had not been more regular in

coming than she; they knew her somebody’s faithful servant, and that

was enough for them.

Down the eastern valley she took her way. The side of Olivet, darkly

green, was spotted with white tents recently put up by people attending

the feasts; the hour, however, was too early for the strangers to be

abroad; still, had it not been so, no one would have troubled her. Past

Gethsemane; past the tombs at the meeting of the Bethany roads; past

the sepulchral village of Siloam she went. Occasionally the decrepit

little body staggered; once she sat down to get her breath; rising

shortly, she struggled on with renewed haste. The great rocks on either

hand, if they had had ears, might have heard her mutter to herself;

could they have seen, it would have been to observe how frequently she

looked up over the Mount, reproving the dawn for its promptness; if it

had been possible for them to gossip, not improbably they would have

said to each other, “Our friend is in a hurry this morning; the mouths

she goes to feed must be very hungry.”

When at last she reached the King’s Garden she slackened her gait; for

then the grim city of the lepers was in view, extending far round the

pitted south hill of Hinnom.

As the reader must by this time have surmised, she was going to her

mistress, whose tomb, it will be remembered, overlooked the well

En-Rogel.

Early as it was, the unhappy woman was up and sitting outside, leaving

Tirzah asleep within. The course of the malady had been terribly swift

in the three years. Conscious of her appearance, with the refined

instincts of her nature, she kept her whole person habitually covered.

Seldom as possible she permitted even Tirzah to see her.

This morning she was taking the air with bared head, knowing there was

no one to be shocked by the exposure. The light was not full, but

enough to show the ravages to which she had been subject. Her hair was

snow-white and unmanageably coarse, falling over her back and shoulders

like so much silver wire. The eyelids, the lips, the nostrils, the

flesh of the cheeks, were either gone or reduced to fetid rawness. The

neck was a mass of ash-colored scales. One hand lay outside the folds

of her habit rigid as that of a skeleton; the nails had been eaten

away; the joints of the fingers, if not bare to the bone, were swollen

knots crusted with red secretion. Head, face, neck, and hand indicated

all too plainly the condition of the whole body. Seeing her thus, it

was easy to understand how the once fair widow of the princely Hur had

been able to maintain her incognito so well through such a period of

years.

When the sun would gild the crest of Olivet and the Mount of Offence

with light sharper and more brilliant in that old land than in the

West, she knew Amrah would come, first to the well, then to a stone

midway the well and the foot of the hill on which she had her abode,

and that the good servant would there deposit the food she carried in

the basket, and fill the water-jar afresh for the day. Of her former

plentitude of happiness, that brief visit was all that remained to the

unfortunate. She could then ask about her son, and be told of his

welfare, with such bits of news concerning him as the messenger could

glean. Usually the information was meagre enough, yet comforting; at

times she heard he was at home; then she would issue from her dreary

cell at break of day, and sit till noon, and from noon to set of sun, a

motionless figure draped in white, looking, statue-like, invariably to

one point—over the Temple to the spot under the rounded sky where the

old house stood, dear in memory, and dearer because he was there.

Nothing else was left her. Tirzah she counted of the dead; and as for

herself, she simply waited the end, knowing every hour of life was an

hour of dying—happily, of painless dying.

The things of nature about the hill to keep her sensitive to the

world’s attractions were wretchedly scant; beasts and birds avoided the

place as if they knew its history and present use; every green thing

perished in its first season; the winds warred upon the shrubs and

venturous grasses, leaving to drought such as they could not uproot.

Look where she would, the view was made depressingly suggestive by

tombs—tombs above her, tombs below, tombs opposite her own tomb—all now

freshly whitened in warning to visiting pilgrims. In the sky—clear,

fair, inviting—one would think she might have found some relief to her

ache of mind; but, alas! in making the beautiful elsewhere the sun

served her never so unfriendly—it did but disclose her growing

hideousness. But for the sun she would not have been the horror she was

to herself, nor been waked so cruelly from dreams of Tirzah as she used

to be. The gift of seeing can be sometimes a dreadful curse.

Does one ask why she did not make an end to her sufferings?

THE LAW FORBADE HER!

A Gentile may smile at the answer; but so will not a son of Israel.

While she sat there peopling the dusky solitude with thoughts even more

cheerless, suddenly a woman came up the hill staggering and spent with

exertion.

The widow arose hastily, and covering her head, cried, in a voice

unnaturally harsh, “Unclean, unclean!”

In a moment, heedless of the notice, Amrah was at her feet. All the

long-pent love of the simple creature burst forth: with tears and

passionate exclamations she kissed her mistress’s garments, and for a

while the latter strove to escape from her; then, seeing she could not,

she waited till the violence of the paroxysm was over.

“What have you done, Amrah?” she said. “Is it by such disobedience you

prove your love for us? Wicked woman! You are lost; and he—your

master—you can never, never go back to him.”

Amrah grovelled sobbing in the dust.

“The ban of the Law is upon you, too; you cannot return to Jerusalem.

What will become of us? Who will bring us bread? O wicked, wicked

Amrah! We are all, all undone alike!”

“Mercy, mercy!” Amrah answered from the ground.

“You should have been merciful to yourself, and by so doing been most

merciful to us. Now where can we fly? There is no one to help us. O

false servant! The wrath of the Lord was already too heavy upon us.”

Here Tirzah, awakened by the noise, appeared at the door of the tomb.

The pen shrinks from the picture she presented. In the half-clad

apparition, patched with scales, lividly seamed, nearly blind, its

limbs and extremities swollen to grotesque largeness, familiar eyes

however sharpened by love could not have recognized the creature of

childish grace and purity we first beheld her.

“Is it Amrah, mother?”

The servant tried to crawl to her also.

“Stay, Amrah!” the widow cried, imperiously. “I forbid you touching

her. Rise, and get you gone before any at the well see you here. Nay, I

forgot—it is too late! You must remain now and share our doom. Rise, I

say!”

Amrah rose to her knees, and said, brokenly and with clasped hands, “O

good mistress! I am not false—I am not wicked. I bring you good

tidings.”

“Of Judah?” and as she spoke, the widow half withdrew the cloth from

her head.

“There is a wonderful man,” Amrah continued, “who has power to cure

you. He speaks a word, and the sick are made well, and even the dead

come to life. I have come to take you to him.”

“Poor Amrah!” said Tirzah, compassionately.

“No,” cried Amrah, detecting the doubt underlying the expression—“no,

as the Lord lives, even the Lord of Israel, my God as well as yours, I

speak the truth. Go with me, I pray, and lose no time. This morning he

will pass by on his way to the city. See! the day is at hand. Take the

food here—eat, and let us go.”

The mother listened eagerly. Not unlikely she had heard of the

wonderful man, for by this time his fame had penetrated every nook in

the land.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“A Nazarene.”

“Who told you about him?”

“Judah.”

“Judah told you? Is he at home?”

“He came last night.”

The widow, trying to still the beating of her heart, was silent awhile.

“Did Judah send you to tell us this?” she next asked.

“No. He believes you dead.”

“There was a prophet once who cured a leper,” the mother said

thoughtfully to Tirzah; “but he had his power from God.” Then

addressing Amrah, she asked, “How does my son know this man so

possessed?”

“He was travelling with him, and heard the lepers call, and saw them go

away well. First there was one man; then there were ten; and they were

all made whole.”

The elder listener was silent again. The skeleton hand shook. We may

believe she was struggling to give the story the sanction of faith,

which is always an absolutist in demand, and that it was with her as

with the men of the day, eye-witnesses of what was done by the Christ,

as well as the myriads who have succeeded them. She did not question

the performance, for her own son was the witness testifying through the

servant; but she strove to comprehend the power by which work so

astonishing could be done by a man. Well enough to make inquiry as to

the fact; to comprehend the power, on the other hand, it is first

necessary to comprehend God; and he who waits for that will die

waiting. With her, however, the hesitation was brief. To Tirzah she

said,

“This must be the Messiah!”

She spoke not coldly, like one reasoning a doubt away, but as a woman

of Israel familiar with the promises of God to her race—a woman of

understanding, ready to be glad over the least sign of the realization

of the promises.

“There was a time when Jerusalem and all Judea were filled with a story

that he was born. I remember it. By this time he should be a man. It

must be—it is he. Yes,” she said to Amrah, “we will go with you. Bring

the water which you will find in the tomb in a jar, and set the food

for us. We will eat and be gone.”

The breakfast, partaken under excitement, was soon despatched, and the

three women set out on their extraordinary journey. As Tirzah had

caught the confident spirit of the others, there was but one fear that

troubled the party. Bethany, Amrah said, was the town the man was

coming from; now from that to Jerusalem there were three roads, or

rather paths—one over the first summit of Olivet, a second at its base,

a third between the second summit and the Mount of Offence. The three

were not far apart; far enough, however, to make it possible for the

unfortunates to miss the Nazarene if they failed the one he chose to

come by.

A little questioning satisfied the mother that Amrah knew nothing of

the country beyond the Cedron, and even less of the intentions of the

man they were going to see, if they could. She discerned, also, that

both Amrah and Tirzah—the one from confirmed habits of servitude, the

other from natural dependency—looked to her for guidance; and she

accepted the charge.

“We will go first to Bethphage,” she said to them. “There, if the Lord

favor us, we may learn what else to do.”

They descended the hill to Tophet and the King’s Garden, and paused in

the deep trail furrowed through them by centuries of wayfaring.

“I am afraid of the road,” the matron said. “Better that we keep to the

country among the rocks and trees. This is feast-day, and on the

hill-sides yonder I see signs of a great multitude in attendance. By

going across the Mount of Offence here we may avoid them.”

Tirzah had been walking with great difficulty; upon hearing this her

heart began to fail her.

“The mount is steep, mother; I cannot climb it.”

“Remember, we are going to find health and life. See, my child, how the

day brightens around us! And yonder are women coming this way to the

well. They will stone us if we stay here. Come, be strong this once.”

Thus the mother, not less tortured herself, sought to inspire the

daughter; and Amrah came to her aid. To this time the latter had not

touched the persons of the afflicted, nor they her; now, in disregard

of consequences as well as of command, the faithful creature went to

Tirzah, and put her arm over her shoulder, and whispered, “Lean on me.

I am strong, though I am old; and it is but a little way off. There—now

we can go.”

The face of the hill they essayed to cross was somewhat broken with

pits, and ruins of old structures; but when at last they stood upon the

top to rest, and looked at the spectacle presented them over in the

northwest—at the Temple and its courtly terraces, at Zion, at the

enduring towers white beetling into the sky beyond—the mother was

strengthened with a love of life for life’s sake.

“Look, Tirzah,” she said—“look at the plates of gold on the Gate

Beautiful. How they give back the flames of the sun, brightness for

brightness! Do you remember we used to go up there? Will it not be

pleasant to do so again? And think—home is but a little way off. I can

almost see it over the roof of the Holy of Holies; and Judah will be

there to receive us!”

From the side of the middle summit garnished green with myrtle and

olive trees, they saw, upon looking that way next, thin columns of

smoke rising lightly and straight up into the pulseless morning, each a

warning of restless pilgrims astir, and of the flight of the pitiless

hours, and the need of haste.

Though the good servant toiled faithfully to lighten the labor in

descending the hill-side, not sparing herself in the least, the girl

moaned at every step; sometimes in extremity of anguish she cried out.

Upon reaching the road—that is, the road between the Mount of Offence

and the middle or second summit of Olivet—she fell down exhausted.

“Go on with Amrah, mother, and leave me here,” she said, faintly.

“No, no, Tirzah. What would the gain be to me if I were healed and you

not? When Judah asks for you, as he will, what would I have to say to

him were I to leave you?”

“Tell him I loved him.”

The elder leper arose from bending over the fainting sufferer, and

gazed about her with that sensation of hope perishing which is more

nearly like annihilation of the soul than anything else. The supremest

joy of the thought of cure was inseparable from Tirzah, who was not too

old to forget, in the happiness of healthful life to come, the years of

misery by which she had been so reduced in body and broken in spirit.

Even as the brave woman was about leaving the venture they were engaged

in to the determination of God, she saw a man on foot coming rapidly up

the road from the east.

“Courage, Tirzah! Be of cheer,” she said. “Yonder I know is one to tell

us of the Nazarene.”

Amrah helped the girl to a sitting posture, and supported her while the

man advanced.

“In your goodness, mother, you forget what we are. The stranger will go

around us; his best gift to us will be a curse, if not a stone.”

“We will see.”

There was no other answer to be given, since the mother was too well

and sadly acquainted with the treatment outcasts of the class to which

she belonged were accustomed to at the hands of her countrymen.

As has been said, the road at the edge of which the group was posted

was little more than a worn path or trail, winding crookedly through

tumuli of limestone. If the stranger kept it, he must meet them face to

face; and he did so, until near enough to hear the cry she was bound to

give. Then, uncovering her head, a further demand of the law, she

shouted shrilly,

“Unclean, unclean!”

To her surprise, the man came steadily on.

“What would you have?” he asked, stopping opposite them not four yards

off.

“Thou seest us. Have a care,” the mother said, with dignity.

“Woman, I am the courier of him who speaketh but once to such as thou

and they are healed. I am not afraid.”

“The Nazarene?”

“The Messiah,” he said.

“Is it true that he cometh to the city to-day?”

“He is now at Bethphage.”

“On what road, master?”

“This one.”

She clasped her hands, and looked up thankfully.

“For whom takest thou him?” the man asked, with pity.

“The Son of God,” she replied.

“Stay thou here then; or, as there is a multitude with him, take thy

stand by the rock yonder, the white one under the tree; and as he goeth

by fail not to call to him; call, and fear not. If thy faith but equal

thy knowledge, he will hear thee though all the heavens thunder. I go

to tell Israel, assembled in and about the city, that he is at hand,

and to make ready to receive him. Peace to thee and thine, woman.”

The stranger moved on.

“Did you hear, Tirzah? Did you hear? The Nazarene is on the road, on

this one, and he will hear us. Once more, my child—oh, only once! and

let us to the rock. It is but a step.”

Thus encouraged Tirzah took Amrah’s hand and arose; but as they were

going, Amrah said, “Stay; the man is returning.” And they waited for

him.

“I pray your grace, woman,” he said, upon overtaking them. “Remembering

that the sun will be hot before the Nazarene arrives, and that the city

is near by to give me refreshment should I need it, I thought this

water would do thee better than it will me. Take it and be of good

cheer. Call to him as he passes.”

He followed the words by offering her a gourd full of water, such as

foot-travellers sometimes carried with them in their journeys across

the hills; and instead of placing the gift on the ground for her to

take up when he was at a safe distance, he gave it into her hand.

“Art thou a Jew?” she asked, surprised.

“I am that, and better; I am a disciple of the Christ who teacheth

daily by word and example this thing which I have done unto you. The

world hath long known the word charity without understanding it. Again

I say peace and good cheer to thee and thine.”

He went on, and they went slowly to the rock he had pointed out to

them, high as their heads, and scarcely thirty yards from the road on

the right. Standing in front of it, the mother satisfied herself they

could be seen and heard plainly by passers-by whose notice they desired

to attract. There they cast themselves under the tree in its shade, and

drank of the gourd, and rested refreshed. Ere long Tirzah slept, and

fearing to disturb her, the others held their peace.

CHAPTER IV

During the third hour the road in front of the resting-place of the

lepers became gradually more and more frequented by people going in the

direction of Bethphage and Bethany; now, however, about the

commencement of the fourth hour, a great crowd appeared over the crest

of Olivet, and as it defiled down the road thousands in number, the two

watchers noticed with wonder that every one in it carried a palm-branch

freshly cut. As they sat absorbed by the novelty, the noise of another

multitude approaching from the east drew their eyes that way. Then the

mother awoke Tirzah.

“What is the meaning of it all?” the latter asked.

“He is coming,” answered the mother. “These we see are from the city

going to meet him; those we hear in the east are his friends bearing

him company; and it will not be strange if the processions meet here

before us.

“I fear, if they do, we cannot be heard.”

The same thought was in the elder’s mind.

“Amrah,” she asked, “when Judah spoke of the healing of the ten, in

what words did he say they called to the Nazarene?”

“Either they said, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us,’ or ‘Master, have

mercy.’”

“Only that?”

“No more that I heard.”

“Yet it was enough,” the mother added, to herself.

“Yes,” said Amrah, “Judah said he saw them go away well.”

Meantime the people in the east came up slowly. When at length the

foremost of them were in sight, the gaze of the lepers fixed upon a man

riding in the midst of what seemed a chosen company which sang and

danced about him in extravagance of joy. The rider was bareheaded and

clad all in white. When he was in distance to be more clearly observed,

these, looking anxiously, saw an olive-hued face shaded by long

chestnut hair slightly sunburned and parted in the middle. He looked

neither to the right nor left. In the noisy abandon of his followers he

appeared to have no part; nor did their favor disturb him in the least,

or raise him out of the profound melancholy into which, as his

countenance showed, he was plunged. The sun beat upon the back of his

head, and lighting up the floating hair gave it a delicate likeness to

a golden nimbus. Behind him the irregular procession, pouring forward

with continuous singing and shouting, extended out of view. There was

no need of any one to tell the lepers that this was he—the wonderful

Nazarene!

“He is here, Tirzah,” the mother said; “he is here. Come, my child.”

As she spoke she glided in front of the white rock and fell upon her

knees.

Directly the daughter and servant were by her side. Then at sight of

the procession in the west, the thousands from the city halted, and

began to wave their green branches, shouting, or rather chanting (for

it was all in one voice),

“Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord!”

And all the thousands who were of the rider’s company, both those near

and those afar, replied so the air shook with the sound, which was as a

great wind threshing the side of the hill. Amidst the din, the cries of

the poor lepers were not more than the twittering of dazed sparrows.

The moment of the meeting of the hosts was come, and with it the

opportunity the sufferers were seeking; if not taken, it would be lost

forever, and they would be lost as well.

“Nearer, my child—let us get nearer. He cannot hear us,” said the

mother.

She arose, and staggered forward. Her ghastly hands were up, and she

screamed with horrible shrillness. The people saw her—saw her hideous

face, and stopped awe-struck—an effect for which extreme human misery,

visible as in this instance, is as potent as majesty in purple and

gold. Tirzah, behind her a little way, fell down too faint and

frightened to follow farther.

“The lepers! the lepers!”

“Stone them!”

“The accursed of God! Kill them!”