“What are you dallying about?”
The basket ascended. I trembled. I almost fainted. My entire hope, my
life, hung upon a thread—upon a hair!
How fortunate it was that I did not send up the parchment alone! My good
angel guided me. Magistus looked into the basket, and seeing it ascend
with the loaf in it, exclaimed,
“He is too weak to take out his bread. I will give him a little wine.”
He seemed to walk away and my heart commenced beating again.
At that moment another little flower, another sunbeam, fell from the
ceiling to my feet: and the lid was closed.
High hope in my soul obliterated for a time even the torture of thirst. I
was calm. I was happy. My invisible friend had received my message. If he
delivered it, I was safe: for Pilate would certainly release me. What if
Pilate was absent or dead or displaced? Such thoughts were torture. Still,
the new governor, whoever he was, would befriend me. I determined not to
give way until night.
Magistus came earlier than usual, and threw me down a goat-skin bottle of
wine and water. I thanked him with the utmost deliberation. He did not
speak in reply. He only wished to fan the embers of life, to prolong my
sufferings. Human nature revolts at the contemplation of such a demon.
Such men are indeed rare, but such evil spirits are common. They are
present to our souls; cunning, cruel, malignant; infusing their poison
into our thoughts and affections; endeavoring to make us such as Magistus.
The worst evils here are moderated and repressed by the counteracting
pressure of good spheres. To see evil in its true light, you must see it
in the world of spirits and in hell—evil utterly divorced from good,
projecting itself outwardly in its own brutal forms, and working out its
frightful destiny.
I waited for my deliverance with a sublime hope, a calm and fixed faith. I
knew it was coming. It came.
Magistus had at length reached, as all wicked men do either in this world
or the next, the limit of his power, the fatal line; after which comes the
rebound, the reaction, the punishment, the disgrace, the sure recoil upon
one’s self of all the evil he meditates against others.
Early in the afternoon I became aware that a great commotion was going on
in the house. The door into the narrow passage was broken open by axes;
for Magistus always carried the key, and he could not be found. A Roman
centurion soon appeared at the window where Magistus had so often stood.
Oh what a picture was his brave, handsome, indignant face! Soldiers came
in. The brick and mortar were soon torn away. I was lifted out and carried
into the open air. I was so overcome with joy that I fainted.
The men who beheld my ghastly features and emaciated form were loud in
their curses of Magistus. I was laid on a bed in the house, and nurses
were assigned me. The kindly centurion did not leave me until I was
comfortably fixed and had recovered from my swoon.
“Pontius Pilate,” said he, “desired me to present you his congratulations,
and to say that he will visit you to-morrow when you have been refreshed
and strengthened by food and a night’s rest; and will then hear your story
from your own lips.”