Zenobia; or, the Fall of Palmyra by William Ware (latest ebook reader TXT) 📖

bias which sways each, the ancient ties which bound us together as brothers will again unite us. The countenance of Calpurnius, though dark and almost stern in its general expression, yet unbends and relaxes frequently and suddenly, in a manner that impresses you forcibly with an inward humanity as the presiding though often concealed quality of his nature. I can trace faintly the features which have been stamped upon my memory--and the form too--chiefly by the recollected scene of that bright morning, when he with our elder brother and venerable parent gave me each a last embrace, as they started for the tents of Valerian. A warmer climate has deepened the olive of his complexion, and at the same time added brilliancy to an eye by nature soft as a woman's. His Persian dress increases greatly the effect of his rare beauty, yet I heartily wish it off, as it contributes more I believe than the lapse of so many years to separate us. He will not seem and feel as a brother till he returns to the costume of his native land. How great this power of mere dress is upon our affections and our regard, you can yourself bear witness, when those who parted from you to travel in foreign countries have returned metamorphosed into Greeks, Egyptians, or Persians, according to the fashions that have struck their foolish fancies. The assumed and foreign air chills the untravelled heart as it greets them. They are no longer the same. However the reason may strive to overcome what seems the mere prejudice of a wayward nature, we strive in vain--nature will be uppermost--and many, many times have I seen the former friend-ships break away and perish.

I could not but be alive to the general justness of the comparison instituted by Isaac, between Calpurnius and Julia. There are many points of resemblance. The very same likeness in kind that we so often observe between a brother and sister--such as we have often remarked in our nephew and niece, Drusus and Lavinia--whose dress being changed, and they are changed.

No sooner had I greeted and welcomed my brother, than I turned to Isaac and saluted him, I am persuaded, with scarcely less cordiality.

'I sincerely bless the gods,' said I, 'that you have escaped the perils of two such passages through the desert, and are safe in Palmyra. May every wish of your heart, concerning your beloved Jerusalem, be accomplished. In the keeping of Demetrius will you find not only the single talent agreed upon in case you returned, but the two which were to be paid had you perished. One such tempest upon the desert, escaped, is more and worse than death itself met softly upon one's bed.'

'Now, Jehovah be praised,' ejaculated Isaac, 'who himself has moved thy heart to this grace! Israel will feel this bounty through every limb, it will be to her as the oil of life.'

'And my debt,' said Calpurnius, 'is greater yet, and should in reason be more largely paid. Through the hands of Demetrius I will discharge it.'

'We are all bound to you,' said Fausta, 'more than words can tell or money pay.'

'You owe more than you are perhaps aware of to the rhetoric of Isaac,' added Calpurnius. 'Had it not been for the faithful zeal and cunning of your messenger in his arguments not less than his contrivances, I had hardly now been sitting within the walls of Palmyra.'

'But then again, noble Roman,' said Isaac, 'to be honest, I ought to say what I said not--for it had not then occurred--in my letter to thy brother, how by my indiscretion I had nearly brought upon myself the wrath, even unto death, of a foul Persian mob, and so sealed thy fate together with my own. Ye have heard doubtless of Manes the Persian, who deems himself some great one, and sent of God? It was noised abroad ere I left Palmyra, that for failing in a much boasted attempt to work a cure by miracle upon the Prince Hormisdas, he had been strangled by order of Sapor. Had he done so, his love of death-doing had at length fallen upon a proper object, a true child of Satan. But as I can testify, his end was not such, and is not yet. He still walks the earth, poisoning the air he breathes, and deluding the souls of men. Him I encountered one day, the very day I had despatched thy letter, in the streets of Ecbatana, dogged at the heels by his twelve ragged apostles, dragging along their thin and bloodless limbs, that seemed each step ready to give way beneath the weight, little as it was, they had to bear. Their master, puffed up with the pride of a reformer, as forsooth he holds himself, stalked by at their head, drawing the admiration of the besotted people by his great show of sanctity, and the wise saws which every now and then he let drop for the edification of such as heard. Some of these sayings fell upon my ear, and who was I, to hear them and not speak? Ye may know that this false prophet has made it his aim to bring into one the Magian and Christian superstitions, so that by such incongruous and deadly mixture he might feed the disciples of those two widely sundered religions, retaining, as he foolishly hoped, enough of the faith of each to satisfy all who should receive the compound. In doing this he hath cast dirt upon the religion of the Jew, blasphemously teaching that our sacred books are the work of the author of evil, while those of Christ are by the author of good. With more zeal, it must be confessed, than wisdom, seeing where I was and why I was there, I resisted this father of lies, and withstood him to his face. 'Who art thou, bold blasphemer,' I said, 'that takest away the Godhead, breaking into twain that which is infinite and indivisible? Who art thou to tread into the dust the faith of Abraham, and Moses, and the prophets, imputing their words, uttered by the spirit of Jehovah, to the great enemy of mankind? I wonder, people of Ecbatana, that the thunders of God sleep, and strike him not to the earth as a rebel--nay, that the earth cleaveth not beneath him and swalloweth him not up, as once before the rebels Korah, Dathan, and Abiram;' and much more in the same mad way, till while I was yet speaking, those lean and hungry followers of his set upon me with violence, crying out against me as a Jew, and stirring up the people, who were nothing unwilling, but fell upon me, and throwing me down, dragged me to a gate of the city, and casting me out as I had been a dead dog, returned themselves like dogs to their vomit--that accursed dish of Manichean garbage. I believed myself for a long while surely dead; and in my half conscious state took shame to myself, as I was bound to do, for meddling in the affairs of Pagan misbelievers--putting thy safety at risk. Through the compassion of an Arab woman dwelling without the walls, I was restored and healed--for whose sake I shall ever bless the Ishmaelite. I doubt not, Roman, while I lay at the hut of that good woman, thou thoughtest me a false man?'

'I could not but think so,' said Calpurnius, 'and after the strong desire of escape which you had at length kindled, I assure you I heaped curses upon you in no stinted measure.'

'But all has ended well and so all is well,' said Fausta, 'and it was perhaps too much to expect, Isaac, that you should stand quietly by and hear the religion of your fathers traduced. You are well rewarded for what you did and suffered, by the light in which your tribe will now regard you, as an almost-martyr, and owing to no want of will, or endeavor on your part, that almost did not end in quite. Hannibal, good Isaac, will now see to your entertainment.'

'One word if it please you,' said Isaac, 'before I depart. The gentile despises the Jew. He charges upon him usury and extortion. He accuses him of avarice. He believes him to subsist upon the very life blood of whomsoever he can draw into his meshes. I have known those who have firm faith that the Jew feeds but upon the flesh and blood of Pagan and Christian infants, whom, by necromantic power, he beguiles from their homes. He is held as the common enemy of man, a universal robber, whom all are bound to hate and oppress. Reward me now with your belief, better than even the two gold talents I have earned, that all are not such. This is the charity, and all that I would beg; and I beg it of you, for that I love you all, and would have your esteem. Believe that in the Jew there is a heart of flesh as well as in a dog. Believe that some noble ambition visits his mind as well as yours. Credit it not--it is against nature--that any tribe of man is what you make the Jew. Look upon me, and behold the emblem of my tribe. What do you see? A man bent with years and toil; this ragged tunic his richest garb; his face worn with the storms of all climates; a wanderer over the earth; my home--Piso, thou hast seen it--a single room, with my good dromedary's furniture for my bed at night, and my seat by day; this pack my only apparent wealth. Yet here have I now received two gold talents of Jerusalem!--what most would say were wealth enough, and this is not the tythe of that which I possess. What then? Is it for that I love obscurity, slavery, and a beggar's raiment, that I live and labor thus, when my wealth would raise me to a prince's state? Or is it that I love to sit and count my hoarded gains? Good friends, for such you are, believe it not. You have found me faithful and true to my engagements; believe my word also. You have heard of Jerusalem, once the chief city of the East, where stood the great temple of our faith, and which was the very heart of our nation, and you know how it was beleaguered by the Romans, and its very foundations rooted up, and her inhabitants driven abroad as outcasts, to wander over the face of the earth, with every where a country, but no where a home. And does the Jew, think you, sit down quietly under these wrongs? Trajan's reign may answer that. Is there no patriotism yet alive in the bosom of a Jew? Will every other toil and die for his country and not the Jew? Believe me again, the prayers which go up morning, noon and night, for the restoration of Jerusalem, are not fewer than those which go up for Rome or Palmyra. And their deeds are not less; for every prayer there are two acts. It is for Jerusalem! that you behold me thus in rags, and yet rich. It is for her glory that I am the servant of all and the scorn of all, that I am now pinched by the winters of Byzantium, now scorched by the heats of Asia, and buried beneath the sands of the desert. All that I have and am is for Jerusalem. And in telling you of myself, I have told you of my tribe. What we do and are is not for ourselves, but for oar country. Friends, the hour of our redemption draweth nigh. The Messiah treads in the steps of Zenobia! and when the East shall behold the disasters of Aurelian--as it will--it will behold the restoration of that empire, which is destined in the lapse of ages to gather to itself the glory and dominion of the whole earth.'

Saying these words, during which he seemed no longer Isaac the Jew, but the very Prince of the Captivity himself, he turned and took his departure.

Long and earnest conversation now ensued, in which we received from Calpurnius the most exact accounts of his whole manner of life during his captivity; of his early sufferings and disgraces, and his late honors and elevation; and gave in return similar details concerning the history of our family and of Rome, during the same period of time. I will not pretend to set down the narrative of Calpurnius. It was delivered with a grace which I can by no means transfer to these pages. I trust you may one day hear it from his own lips. Neither can I tell you how beautiful it was to see Fausta hanging upon his words, with a devotion that made her insensible to all else--her