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

His hands were manacled, his legs also were loaded with chains. The notion that his life might perhaps have been cruelly spared in order that he might linger on in this horrible state of conscious annihilation filled him with frenzy. He would have dashed his fetters against his brow, but the chain restrained him. He flung himself upon the damp and rugged ground. His fall disturbed a thousand obscene things. He heard the quick glide of a serpent, the creeping retreat of the clustering scorpions, and the swift escape of the dashing rats. His mighty calamities seemed slight when compared with these petty miseries. His great soul could not support him under these noisome and degrading incidents. He sprang, in disgust, upon his feet, and stood fearful of moving, lest every step should introduce him to some new abomination. At length, exhausted nature was unable any longer to sustain him. He groped his way to the rude seat, cut in the rocky wall, which was his only accommodation. He put forth his hand. It touched the slimy fur of some wild animal, that instantly sprang away, its fiery eyes sparkling in the dark. Alroy recoiled with a sensation of woe-begone dismay. His shaken nerves could not sustain him under this base danger, and these foul and novel trials. He could not refrain from an exclamation of despair; and, when he remembered that he was now far beyond the reach of all human solace and sympathy, even all human aid, for a moment his mind seemed to desert him; and he wrung his hands in forlorn and almost idiotic woe. An awful thing it is, the failure of the energies of a master-mind. He who places implicit confidence in his genius will find himself some day utterly defeated and deserted. 'Tis bitter! Every paltry hind seems but to breathe to mock you. Slow, indeed, is such a mind to credit that the never-failing resource can at least be wanting. But so it is. Like a dried-up fountain, the perennial flow and bright fertility have ceased, and ceased for ever. Then comes the madness of retrospection.

Draw a curtain! draw a curtain! and fling it over this agonising anatomy.

The days of childhood, his sweet sister's voice and smiling love, their innocent pastimes, and the kind solicitude of faithful servants, all the soft detail of mild domestic life: these were the sights and memories that flitted in wild play before the burning vision of Alroy, and rose upon his tortured mind. Empire and glory, his sacred nation, his imperial bride; these, these were nothing. Their worth had vanished with the creative soul that called them into action. The pure sympathies of nature alone remained, and all his thought and grief, all his intelligence, all his emotion, were centred in his sister.

It was the seventh morning. A guard entered at an unaccustomed hour, and, sticking a torch into a niche in the wall, announced that a person was without who had permission to speak to the prisoner. They were the first human accents that had met the ear of Alroy during his captivity, which seemed to him an age, a long dark period, that cancelled all things. He shuddered at the harsh tones. He tried to answer, but his unaccustomed lips refused their office. He raised his heavy arms, and endeavoured to signify his consciousness of what had been uttered. Yet, indeed, he had not listened to the message without emotion. He looked forward to the grate with strange curiosity; and, as he looked, he trembled. The visitor entered, muffled in a dark caftan. The guard disappeared; and the caftan falling to the ground, revealed Honain.

'My beloved Alroy,' said the brother of Jabaster; and he advanced, and pressed him to his bosom. Had it been Miriam, Alroy might have at once expired; but the presence of this worldly man called back his worldliness. The revulsion of his feelings was wonderful. Pride, perhaps even hope, came to his aid; all the associations seemed to counsel exertion; for a moment he seemed the same Alroy.

'I rejoice to find at least thee safe, Honain.'

'I also, if my security may lead to thine.'

'Still whispering hope!'

'Despair is the conclusion of fools.'

'O Honain! 'tis a great trial. I can play my part, and yet methinks 'twere better we had not again met. How is Schirene?'

'Thinking of thee.'

'Tis something that she can think. My mind has gone. Where's Miriam?'

'Free.'

'That's something. Thou hast done that. Good, good Honain, be kind to that sweet child, if only for my sake. Thou art all she has left.'

'She hath thee.'

'Her desolation.'

'Live and be her refuge.'

'How's that? These walls! Escape? No, no; it is impossible.'

'I do not deem it so.'

'Indeed! I'll do anything. Speak! Can we bribe? can we cleave their skulls? can we----'

'Calm thyself, my friend. There is no need of bribes, no need of bloodshed. We must make terms.'

'Terms! We might have made them on the plain of Nehauend. Terms! Terms with a captive victim?'

'Why victim?'

'Is Arslan then so generous?'

'He is a beast, more savage than the boar that grinds its tusks within his country's forests.'

'Why speakest thou then of hope?'

'I spoke of certainty. I did not mention hope.'

'Dear Honain, my brain is weak; but I can bear strange things, or else I should not be here. I feel thy thoughtful friendship; but indeed there need no winding words to tell my fate. Pr'ythee speak out.'

'In a word, thy life is safe.'

'What! spared?'

'If it please thee.'

'Please me? Life is sweet. I feel its sweetness. I want but little. Freedom and solitude are all I ask. My life spared! I'll not believe it. Thou hast done this deed, thou mighty man, that masterest all souls. Thou hast not forgotten me; thou hast not forgotten the days gone by, thou hast not forgotten thine own Alroy! Who calls thee worldly is a slanderer. O Honain! thou art too faithful!'

'I have no thought but for thy service, Prince.'

'Call me not Prince, call me thine own Alroy. My life spared! 'Tis wonderful! When may I go? Let no one see me. Manage that, Honain. Thou canst manage all things. I am for Egypt. Thou hast been to Egypt, hast thou not, Honain?'

'A very wondrous land, 'twill please thee much.'

'When may I go? Tell me when I may go. When may I quit this dark and noisome cell? 'Tis worse than all their tortures, dear Honain. Air and light, and I really think my spirit never would break, but this horrible dungeon---- I scarce can look upon thy face, sweet friend. 'Tis serious.'

'Wouldst thou have me gay?'

'Yes! if we are free.'

'Alroy! thou art a great spirit, the greatest that I e'er knew, have ever read of. I never knew thy like, and never shall.'

'Tush, tush, sweet friend, I am a broken reed, but still I am free. This is no time for courtly phrases. Let's go, and go at once.'

'A moment, dear Alroy. I am no flatterer. What I said came from my heart, and doth concern us much and instantly. I was saying thou hast no common mind, Alroy; indeed thou hast a mind unlike all others. Listen, my Prince. Thou hast read mankind deeply and truly. Few have seen more than thyself, and none have so rare a spring of that intuitive knowledge of thy race, which is a gem to which experience is but a jeweller, and without which no action can befriend us.'

'Well, well!'

'A moment's calmness. Thou hast entered Bagdad in triumph, and thou hast entered the same city with every contumely which the base spirit of our race could cast upon its victim. 'Twas a great lesson.'

'I feel it so.'

'And teaches us how vile and valueless is the opinion of our fellow-men.'

'Alas! 'tis true.'

'I am glad to see thee in this wholesome temper. 'Tis full of wisdom.'

'The miserable are often wise.'

'But to believe is nothing unless we act. Speculation should only sharpen practice. The time hath come to prove thy lusty faith in this philosophy. I told thee we could make terms. I have made them. To-morrow it was doomed Alroy should die--and what a death! A death of infinite torture! Hast ever seen a man impaled?'[81]

'Hah!'

'To view it is alone a doom.'

'God of Heaven!'

'It is so horrible, that 'tis ever marked, that when this direful ceremony occurs, the average deaths in cities greatly increase. 'Tis from the turning of the blood in the spectators, who yet from some ungovernable madness cannot refrain from hurrying to the scene. I speak with some authority. I speak as a physician.'

'Speak no more, I cannot endure it.'

'To-morrow this doom awaited thee. As for Schirene----'

'Not for her, oh! surely not for her?'

'No, they were merciful. She is a Caliph's daughter. 'Tis not forgotten. The axe would close her life. Her fair neck would give slight trouble to the headsman's art. But for thy sister, but for Miriam, she is a witch, a Jewish witch! They would have burnt her alive!'

'I'll not believe it, no, no, I'll not believe it: damnable, bloody demons! When I had power I spared all, all but----ah, me! ah, me! why did I live?'

'Thou dost forget thyself; I speak of that which was to have been, not of that which is to be. I have stepped in and communed with the conqueror. I have made terms.'

'What are they, what can they be?'

'Easy. To a philosopher like Alroy an idle ceremony.'

'Be brief, be brief.'

'Thou seest thy career is a great scandal to the Moslemin. I mark their weakness, and I have worked upon it. Thy mere defeat or death will not blot out the stain upon their standard and their faith. The public mind is wild with fantasies since Alroy rose. Men's opinions flit to and fro with that fearful change that bodes no stable settlement of states. None know what to cling to, or where to place their trust. Creeds are doubted, authority disputed. They would gladly account for thy success by other than human means, yet must deny thy mission. There also is the fame of a fair and mighty Princess, a daughter of their Caliphs, which they would gladly clear. I mark all this, observe and work upon it. So, could we devise some means by which thy lingering followers could be for ever silenced, this great scandal fairly erased, and the public frame brought to a sounder and more tranquil pulse, why, they would concede much, much, very much.'

'Thy meaning, not thy means, are evident.'

'They are in thy power.'

'In mine? 'Tis a deep riddle. Pr'ythee solve it.'

'Thou wilt be summoned at to-morrow's noon before this Arslan. There in the presence of the assembled people who are now with him as much as they were with thee, thou wilt be accused of magic, and of intercourse with the infernal powers. Plead guilty.'

'Well! is there more?'

'Some trifle. They will then examine thee about the Princess. It is not difficult to confess that Alroy won the Caliph's daughter by an irresistible spell, and now 'tis broken.'

'So, so. Is that all?'

'The chief. Thou canst then address some phrases to the Hebrew prisoners, denying thy Divine mission, and so forth, to settle the public mind, observe, upon