Alroy by Benjamin Disraeli (free children's ebooks online .txt) 📖

in the distance. Faint and toiling, a pilgrim slowly clambered up the steep and stony track.

The sultry hours moved on; the pilgrim at length gained the summit of the mountain, a small and rugged table-land, strewn with huge masses of loose and heated, rock. All around was desolation: no spring, no herbage; the bird and the insect were alike mute. Still it was the summit: no loftier peaks frowned in the distance; the pilgrim stopped, and breathed with more facility, and a faint smile played over his languid and solemn countenance.

He rested a few minutes; he took from his wallet some locusts and wild honey, and a small skin of water. His meal was short as well as simple. An ardent desire to reach his place of destination before nightfall urged him to proceed. He soon passed over the table-land, and commenced the descent of the mountain. A straggling olive-tree occasionally appeared, and then a group, and soon the groups swelled into a grove. His way wound through the grateful and unaccustomed shade. He emerged from the grove, and found that he had proceeded down more than half the side of the mountain. It ended precipitously in a dark and narrow ravine, formed on the other side by an opposite mountain, the lofty steep of which was crested by a city gently rising on a gradual slope.

Nothing could be conceived more barren, wild, and terrible than the surrounding scenery, unillumined by a single trace of culture. The city stood like the last gladiator in an amphitheatre of desolation.

It was surrounded by a lofty turreted wall, of an architecture to which the pilgrim was unaccustomed: gates with drawbridge and portcullis, square towers, and loopholes for the archer. Sentinels, clothed in steel and shining in the sunset, paced, at regular intervals, the cautious wall, and on a lofty tower a standard waved, a snowy standard, with a red, red cross!

The Prince of the Captivity at length beheld the lost capital of his fathers.[35]

A few months back, and such a spectacle would have called forth all the latent passion of Alroy; but time and suffering, and sharp experience, had already somewhat curbed the fiery spirit of the Hebrew Prince. He gazed upon Jerusalem, he beheld the City of David garrisoned by the puissant warriors of Christendom, and threatened by the innumerable armies of the Crescent. The two great divisions of the world seemed contending for a prize, which he, a lonely wanderer, had crossed the desert to rescue.

If his faith restrained him from doubting the possibility of his enterprise, he was at least deeply conscious that the world was a very different existence from what he had fancied amid the gardens of Hamadan and the rocks of Caucasus, and that if his purpose could be accomplished, it could only be effected by one means. Calm, perhaps somewhat depressed, but full of pious humiliation, and not deserted by holy hope, he descended into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and so, slaking his thirst at Siloah, and mounting the opposite height, David Alroy entered Jerusalem by the gate of Zion.[36]

He had been instructed that the quarter allotted to his people was near this entrance. He inquired the direction of the sentinel, who did not condescend to answer him. An old man, in shabby robes, who was passing, beckoned to him.

'What want you, friend?' inquired Alroy.

'You were asking for the quarter of our people. You must be a stranger, indeed, in Jerusalem, to suppose that a Frank would speak to a Jew. You were lucky to get neither kicked nor cursed.'

'Kicked and cursed! Why, these dogs----'

'Hush! hush! for the love of God,' said his new companion, much alarmed. 'Have you lent money to their captain that you speak thus? In Jerusalem our people speak only in a whisper.'

'No matter: the cure is not by words. Where is our quarter?'

'Was the like ever seen! Why, he speaks as if he were a Frank. I save him from having his head broken by a gauntlet, and----'

'My friend, I am tired. Our quarter?'

'Whom may you want?'

'The Chief Rabbi.'

'You bear letters to him?'

'What is that to you?'

'Hush! hush! You do not know what Jerusalem is, young man. You must not think of going on in this way. Where do you come from?'

'Bagdad.'

'Bagdad! Jerusalem is not Bagdad. A Turk is a brute, but a Christian is a demon.'

'But our quarter, our quarter?'

'Hush! you want the Chief Rabbi?'

'Ay! ay!'

'Rabbi Zimri?'

'It may be so. I neither know nor care.'

'Neither knows nor cares! This will never do; you must not go on in this way at Jerusalem. You must not think of it.'

'Fellow, I see thou art a miserable prattler. Show me our quarter, and I will pay thee well, or be off.'

'Be off! Art thou a Hebrew? to say "be off" to any one. You come from Bagdad! I tell you what, go back to Bagdad. You will never do for Jerusalem.'

'Your grizzled beard protects you. Old fool, I am a pilgrim just arrived, wearied beyond expression, and you keep me here listening to your flat talk!'

'Flat talk! Why! what would you?'

'Lead me to the Rabbi Zimri, if that be his name.'

'If that be his name! Why, every one knows Rabbi Zimri, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, the successor of Aaron. We have our temple yet, say what they like. A very learned doctor is Rabbi Zimri.'

'Wretched driveller. I am ashamed to lose my patience with such a dotard.'

'Driveller! dotard! Why, who are you?'

'One you cannot comprehend. Without another word, lead me to your chief.'

'Chief! you have not far to go. I know no one of the nation who holds his head higher than I do here, and they call me Zimri.'

'What, the Chief Rabbi, that very learned doctor?'

'No less; I thought you had heard of him.'

'Let us forget the past, good Zimri. When great men play the incognito, they must sometimes hear rough phrases. It is the Caliph's lot as well as yours. I am glad to make the acquaintance of so great a doctor. Though young, and roughly habited, I have seen the world a little, and may offer next Sabbath in the synagogue more dirhems than you would perhaps suppose. Good and learned Zimri, I would be your guest.'

'A very worshipful young man! And he speaks low and soft now! But it was lucky I was at hand. Good, what's your name?'

'David.'

'A very honest name, good David. It was lucky I was at hand when you spoke to the sentinel, though. A Jew speak to a Frank, and a sentinel too! Hah! hah! hah! that is good. How Rabbi Maimon will laugh! Faith it was very lucky, now, was not it?'

'Indeed, most fortunate.'

'Well that is candid! Here! this way. 'Tis not far. We number few, sir, of our brethren here, but a better time will come, a better time will come.'

'I think so. This is your door?'

'An humble one. Jerusalem is not Bagdad, but you are welcome.'

'King Pirgandicus[37] entered them,' said Rabbi Maimon, 'but no one since.'

'And when did he live?' inquired Alroy. 'His reign is recorded in the Talmud,' answered Rabbi Zimri, 'but in the Talmud there are no dates.' 'A long while ago?' asked Alroy. 'Since the Captivity,' answered Rabbi Maimon. 'I doubt that,' said Rabbi Zimri, 'or why should he be called king?'

'Was he of the house of David?' said Alroy.

'Without doubt,' said Rabbi Maimon; 'he was one of our greatest kings, and conquered Julius Caesar.'[38]

'His kingdom was in the northernmost parts of Africa,' said Rabbi Zimri, 'and exists to this day, if we could but find it.'

'Ay, truly,' added Rabbi Maimon, 'the sceptre has never departed out of Judah; and he rode always upon a white elephant.'

'Covered with cloth of gold,' added Rabbi Zimri. 'And he visited the Tombs of the Kings?'[39] inquired Alroy.

'Without doubt,' said Rabbi Maimon. 'The whole account is in the Talmud.'

'And no one can now find them?' 'No one,' replied Rabbi Zimri: 'but, according to that learned doctor, Moses Hallevy, they are in a valley in the mountains of Lebanon, which was sealed up by the Archangel Michael.'

'The illustrious Doctor Abarbanel, of Babylon,' said Rabbi Maimon, 'gives one hundred and twenty reasons in his commentary on the Gemara to prove that they sunk under the earth at the taking of the Temple.'

'No one reasons like Abarbanel of Babylon,' said Rabbi Zimri.

'The great Rabbi Akiba, of Pundebita, has answered them all,' said Rabbi Maimon, 'and holds that they were taken up to heaven.'

'And which is right?' inquired Rabbi Zimri.

'Neither,' said Rabbi Maimon.

'One hundred and twenty reasons are strong proof,' said Rabbi Zimri.

'The most learned and illustrious Doctor Aaron Mendola, of Granada,' said Rabbi Maimon, 'has shown that we must look for the Tombs of the Kings in the south of Spain.'

'All that Mendola writes is worth attention,' said Rabbi Zimri.

'Rabbi Hillel,[40] of Samaria, is worth two Mendolas any day,' said Rabbi Maimon.

''Tis a most learned doctor,' said Rabbi Zimri; 'and what thinks he?'

'Hillel proves that there are two Tombs of the Kings,' said Rabbi Maimon, 'and that neither of them are the right ones.'

'What a learned doctor!' exclaimed Rabbi Zimri.

'And very satisfactory,' remarked Alroy.

'These are high subjects,' continued Maimon, his blear eyes twinkling with complacency. 'Your guest, Rabbi Zimri, must read the treatise of the learned Shimei, of Damascus, on "Effecting Impossibilities."'

'That is a work!' exclaimed Zimri.

'I never slept for three nights after reading that work,' said Rabbi Maimon. 'It contains twelve thousand five hundred and thirty-seven quotations from the Pentateuch, and not a single original observation.'

'There were giants in those days,' said Rabbi Zimri; 'we are children now.'

'The first chapter makes equal sense, read backward or forward,' continued Rabbi Maimon. 'Ichabod!' exclaimed Rabbi Zimri. 'And the initial letter of every section is a cabalistical type of a king of Judah.'

'The temple will yet be built,' said Rabbi Zimri. 'Ay, ay! that is learning!' exclaimed Rabbi Maimon; 'but what is the great treatise on "Effecting Impossibilities" to that profound, admirable, and----'

'Holy Rabbi!' said a youthful reader of the synagogue, who now entered, 'the hour is at hand.'

'You don't say so! Learned Miamon, I must to the synagogue. I could sit here all day listening to you. Come, David, the people await us.'

Zimri and Alroy quitted the house, and proceeded along the narrow hilly streets to the chief temple of the Hebrews.

'It grieves the venerable Maimon much that he cannot join us,' said Rabbi Zimri. 'You have doubtless heard of him at Bagdad; a most learned doctor.' Alroy bowed in silence.

'He bears his years well. You would hardly believe that he was my master.'

'I perceive that you inherit much of his erudition.'

'You are kind. If he have breathed one year, Rabbi Maimon will be a hundred and ten next Passover.'

'I doubt it not.'

'When he is gathered to his fathers, a great light will be extinguished in Israel. You wanted to know something about the Tombs of the Kings; I told you he was your man. How full he was! His mind, sir, is an egg.'