CHAPTER XXI

THE DYING CITY

The gaunt specter of famine was stalking through Jerusalem.

On the very first day of the siege the price of food had mounted so high that a bushel of wheat could not be had for less than a talent of gold,[28] but as soon as the Roman wall had cut off the Jews from all external supplies ten times ten talents could not purchase even a handful of grain.

Then from ten thousand homes there rose up the cry for bread; but the heaven above was as brass; the God that had shed down manna upon their forefathers remained cold to all the wild wailings in the synagogues.

He who had laid up food for himself was not certain of benefiting by his forethought, for the Zealots broke into whatsoever house they pleased, and upon those suspected of concealing food they inflicted torments so horrible as to seem rather the invention of fiends than of men.

Among those hitherto preserved from the visits of the Zealots, though living in daily dread of such visits, were Vashti and her mother.

The two dwelt all alone, since Miriam, in expectation of famine, had dismissed her handmaids at the beginning of the siege.

Vashti had never known a more unhappy time than the present, and she had begun to doubt whether it would not have been wiser to have followed the counsel of the holy Simeon by escaping while it was possible from the doomed city.

It was not the gnawing pangs of hunger that distressed her so much as the knowledge that she had altogether lost her mother’s love. Miriam treated her with an unkindliness that seemed to increase with each succeeding day. She was forever reproaching Vashti as being a Christian and a lover of the Romans.

“But I love you, too, dear mother, more than all the Christians, or would I have remained here with you, when I might have retired safely to Pella?”

Her mother took no notice of this pertinent argument, but began to inveigh against Crispus, whose conspicuous valor during the siege had inspired the Jews with a hatred almost equal to that felt for Titus himself.

“Why did you nurse him back to life? He is a serpent repaying our kindness by doing all the hurt he can to the holy city.”

Not wishing to vex her mother, Vashti refrained from argument, and went with aching heart to survey their fast diminishing store of provisions. The slender stock of meal, figs, and dried grapes would last but a few days more, and then----?

The two women contented themselves with a few mouthfuls a day in order that little Arad might have sufficient for his wants. He was now between five and six years of age, and was idolized at least by his sister, if not by his mother. The child could not help observing how little they ate.

“It is all through the Romans,” answered his mother fiercely, adding, “say, ‘God curse the Romans!’”

The little fellow repeated the words.

“Now you say it, Vashti,” said he.

But Vashti, believing that the Romans were God’s ministers, tearfully shook her head, and this produced a fresh outburst of wrath on the part of Miriam, who seemed to take an unholy pleasure in setting the child against Vashti, saying so many bitter things that Vashti withdrew weeping.

At last came the time of starvation.

For two days the women fasted, giving to Arad what remained of their store; and, as Miriam watched him eating, there was in her eyes a look that Vashti did not like to see, a look as if she were begrudging the child its food.

On the third day he, too, had to fast.

His pitiful questionings and sobbings gave additional pangs to Vashti’s own anguish. But where was she to look for relief? To solicit food from her friends and neighbors would but provoke them to mocking laughter, if indeed the power to laugh remained in them. If they had food, would they part with it, when such act would be but to hasten their own end? What was Arad to them? they would say. Had they not dying children of their own? Why prolong Arad’s sufferings? The quicker death came to him the better. Such were the answers Vashti would receive, as she very well knew.

As for Miriam, she had grown neglectful of the boy; faint and dizzy, she restlessly tottered with feeble step from room to room, looking into every corner, probing behind every piece of furniture, emptying every chest of its contents, in the hope of lighting upon something--anything--that could satisfy for a time the gnawing pangs of hunger. But vain was her search.

The two women passed the third night foodless. Arad cried himself to sleep. Vashti spent the dark hours in a state between slumbering and waking; when she dreamed, it was of delicious banquets, from which with a sudden start she would wake to the dreadful realities of her position.

And now dawned the fourth day of her fast, and Arad, waking again, set up his piteous cry for food, a cry that went to the heart of Vashti. Must she sit idly by, and watch the child die?

A sudden thought set all her nerves thrilling with joy. Looking around and finding her mother absent, she knelt beside his pallet, and whispered to him, “Don’t cry, Arad. Lie still, and be good, and I’ll bring you something to eat.”

Pacified somewhat by this announcement the little fellow became quiet.

On passing into the next chamber Vashti saw her mother crouching in a corner upon the floor, her head bowed down upon her knees. She seemed, as if having once sat down, to lack all power to rise again. As Vashti drew near, Miriam feebly raised her head, and stared in moody and dull despair at her daughter. She made no inquiries as to Arad; not a word passed her lips; she had reached the stage when speaking becomes painful and irritating, the stage when all interest in outward things ceases, the stage where one sits on the ground silently brooding, waiting for the slow approach of death.

Vashti’s youthful frame contained more life and energy than her mother’s, but soon she, too, unable to drag her limbs along, must sit, brooding, silent, dying.

Vashti said nothing to her mother. What could she say? Cheering words would be but a mockery.

She climbed the stairway, and passed out upon the roof.

A few weeks previously Arad had taken there a large cake of bread with a view of amusing himself by tossing crumbs up into the air in order to attract the attention of pigeons and sparrows. For some reason or other he had not carried out his purpose, and the bread instead of being carried down again was placed by him within a hollow under a tile to be reserved for the sport of some other day. That day had never come, however; and there it had lain forgotten by Vashti till this moment. Was it still there? she wondered. Yes, there it was, large enough to serve little Arad for one meal. A great temptation came upon Vashti to fix her teeth into it there and then, and gnaw away till nothing remained; but the thought of Arad controlled this selfish prompting.

The bread was as hard as iron, but a little soaking in water would soon render it soft and palatable.

Concealing the precious fragment within her bosom, Vashti descended the stairway, passing by her mother again, who looked at her with the same listless, mechanical stare as before. Under that dreadful look Vashti felt like a traitress. A struggle began in her breast. Was it right to conceal this discovery from her mother? Was she not entitled to a share of the crust? Yes, if she would be content with a share, but supposing in her fierce hunger she should seize upon the whole? _There_ was Vashti’s fear. Affection bade her choose between her mother and Arad, and the latter prevailed. It went to her heart to leave her mother dying there, but it would go to her heart still more to see little Arad robbed of his last morsel by the mother who bore him.

As Vashti entered the chamber the little fellow turned his eyes eagerly upon her.

She stole to his pallet.

“See! here is a large cake of bread; but it is hard, and must be softened before you can eat it.” And then, dreading lest her mother’s ears should be caught by these doings, she added in a whisper, “Hush! do not talk, darling. Lie still, and you shall have it soon.”

Having rendered the bread eatable by moistening it with water, tormented the while by a fearful longing to devour it herself, she handed the whole to Arad.

There were many fathers among the besieging Romans outside, men of humane disposition, despite their warlike calling. Could they have witnessed the joy with which the little fellow swallowed the not very palatable morsels, they would surely have loaded their balistæ, not with stones, but with loaves, and have rained them upon the roof of Miriam’s dwelling.

“Eat slowly,” said Vashti, “or ’twill do you hurt.”

She had scarcely said this when a scream broke from her. Between her and Arad there had suddenly dropped a skinny hand, a hand that clutched greedily at the bread, a hand belonging to the figure whom Vashti had thought to be still crouching upon the floor of the next apartment.

Arad, instinctively divining that he was about to be robbed of his meal, crammed one end of the crust into his mouth.

“Give it to me,” shrieked Miriam, tugging at the other end with such force as to drag the child from off his pallet.

Arad hung with his teeth upon the crust; it suddenly parted, and Miriam, securing her own piece, swallowed it with a wolfish gusto dreadful to witness, while Vashti looked on in fear and trembling.

“Oh, mother! mother!” she gasped. “How could you do it?”

Arad, frightened almost to death by his mother’s deed and look, clung to his sister, who strove to soothe his grief.

“It is as I have suspected,” said Miriam. “You are hiding food from me to satisfy yourself and Arad, while I, your mother, may starve.”

“Not so, mother.”

“Will you deny what mine eyes have seen? Show me the way to your secret store.”

“I have no secret store.”

“Whence, then, did you obtain this bread?”

Vashti explained, but all to no purpose. Miriam persisted in declaring that Vashti had secreted provisions somewhere in the house, and announced her intention of watching henceforth all her daughter’s movements.

Vashti, weak before, was now almost ready to collapse under the shock of this rude encounter, but for Arad’s sake she bravely bore up.

Her indignation against her mother passed away after a time, giving place to pity; in taking Arad’s food Miriam had been doing only what she herself had been terribly tempted to do. Though tormented within by a gnawing pain that grew greater with each hour, Vashti, hiding it all under a cheerful mien, sought to make Arad forget his sorrows; she brought out his toys (for children had toys in those days as in these) and played with him; she procured parchment, ink and pens, and drew letters and objects and little pictures for his diversion; she told him simple stories and sang some of the psalms known to him that he might chime in with his little voice. Those psalms recalled the happy twilight hours spent with Crispus, and she sang with a quaver in her voice and tears welling from her eyes, till at last she broke down entirely and sobbed aloud. Seeing his sister cry, Arad naturally cried, too; and, the pangs of hunger asserting themselves, he began his piteous wail for something to eat.

“Give us of your store,” said Miriam.

“Mother, I have no store.”

“Then, find us food,” returned Miriam, raising her voice to a shriek. “You see me and the child starving, and yet you sit idly by doing nothing to prevent it. Are we to die? I am too weak to stir abroad, but you have strength left. There must be food somewhere in the city. Go and find it. Take money, your jewels, your golden zone. Buy--beg--steal, if need be, but bring us food.”

In Vashti’s opinion Miriam’s words were mere raving. Of what use was it to wander through the city offering to buy food from a starving populace? He who had bread, would he not keep it?

Suddenly she bethought herself of one with whom she had always been a favorite, the benevolent Johanan ben Zacchai, whose two daughters had been her lifelong friends.

She would go to their home in Ophel, and, if they should be the happy possessors of food, beg a little of it for the sake of Arad. Kissing him passionately she laid him down, and went forth on this dubious errand.

* * * * *

The setting sun was tingeing with a golden glow the higher parts of the city as Vashti unbarred the gate of her dwelling, a gate that had not opened for many weeks.

The first thing that impressed her was the strange stillness that prevailed around, “_a deep silence and a kind of deadly night_,” to use the language of the contemporary historian. The street was empty; every house, like her own, was shut and barred.

Significant fact! What silent tragedies, what scenes of anguish, were taking place behind those closed doors and latticed windows?

As she stepped out into the street her eye was caught by a startling object. Hanging by a rope from a hook fixed into an adjacent wall was a shriveled and mummified corpse, that of a man, who, doubtless unable longer to endure the agonies of slow starvation, had chosen to hasten his end by suicide. The thought that before her journey’s end she was likely to see other sights like this, or even more ghastly, almost drove her within the house again, but her mother’s wrath and Arad’s hunger spurred her on, and she walked away as quickly as her weakness would let her.

A few paces, and she saw lying within the entrance of a narrow archway the body of a woman but recently dead, a woman with a frame emaciated by famine, the skin tightly drawn over her bones, the veins on her shriveled neck showing like sinews. Pillowed upon her arm lay an infant whose hand convulsively grasped his mother’s withered breast, twisting it with his fingers, and uttering feeble little cries of anger at finding himself deprived of sustenance. Pity for the mother, a greater pity for the babe, put Vashti in a state of hesitation. To leave the infant dying there was an unnatural act; on the other hand, where was the good in taking it to her own home? Neither she nor her mother had the means of preserving its life. It might as well die under the open sky as under a roof; and so, steeling her heart, Vashti went slowly on. But she got no further than the end of the street; beginning to feel like a murderess, she turned back, only to find the infant breathing its last.

Leaving mother and babe Vashti went on her way, seeing with a pitying heart other sights equally grim. The Apocalypse, but recently written, had not yet come to her knowledge, or she might have recalled the passage, “_Their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city._”

She entered a silent square, seemingly empty, but a second glance around showed her on its southern side a group of human figures--perhaps twenty in all--men, women, and children, clustered in various attitudes upon the steps of the Royal Synagogue. They took no notice of her approach, though her footsteps sounded unnaturally loud in the strange stillness.

Vashti stopped short, absolutely appalled at their aspect. Though terribly wasted herself, Vashti was plump compared with these figures. With limbs attenuated to those of a skeleton; with eyes deep sunken in their orbit; with cheek-bones projecting hideously; with complexions darkened by famine, they looked like weird beings from another world. More dreadful than all was the look of unspeakable anguish stamped upon their features; it was the look of men who would never smile more in this world. They had come to this spot because from it their beloved temple could be seen; and they would fain die with their glazing eyes fixed to the last upon the lofty golden pinnacles of the white marble shrine that stood out in all its loveliness against the calm blue sky of evening.

Dead and dying they lay, stretched athwart the steps. “Those who were just going to die looked upon those that were gone to their rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths.”[29]

Suddenly a sound became audible; distant at first, it grew painfully loud, and at last, with a rattle and a clang, a dozen armed Zealots, belonging to John’s party, came marching into the square, their well-preserved physique affording a striking contrast to the ghastly group on the synagogue steps. Famine had not yet laid its finger upon _them_.

Seemingly in the best of spirits they talked and laughed in rude fashion, indifferent to the suffering that met them at every point. As a matter of fact, they had come out purposely to add to the city’s sufferings. Four of their number carried a small battering-ram, intended to force open the doors of such obstinate citizens as were bent on keeping their own provisions.

Vashti noticed that these Zealots were taking the way that led past the synagogue. Not wishing to attract their attention, she crept to the side of the building, and hid herself behind a buttress, contriving the while, however, to keep watch upon the approaching group.

As they drew nearer she saw to her surprise that the more youthful of them were _dressed as women_ in all the bravery of finely dyed garments and golden anklets that tinkled as they walked; their long, flowing hair was decked with the _suffa_, a gauzy network, that, attached to the headdress, hung down over the shoulders as far as the waist; red coloring glowed on their cheeks, while their eyes, to make them appear larger and more lustrous, were painted round with _kohl_, and their eyebrows arched and darkened with the same preparation.

Their appearance thrilled Vashti with a mysterious and nameless horror; she wondered what this feminine garb should mean, not knowing in her innocence that the temple had become, under John of Giscala, the seat of infamies that caused the seer of Patmos to brand the once holy city with a fearful name.

The Zealots in passing glanced at the silent throng, whose dying anguish provoked only their savage mirth.

“More victims for the dead-cart,” laughed one. “Aha!” he continued, stopping in his walk, and pointing to a ghastly stiffened figure lying supine upon the stairs, “whom have we here? Asenath the harlot, as I live. One can scarce recognize in her the one-time favorite of old Ananias. How she stares! Is she living or dead?”

“Dead!” replied another Zealot.

“I’ll wager ten shekels she’s living,” cried he who had spoken first.

“And I’ll wager the same that she’s dead,” answered the second.

“Good! you hear,” said the first, addressing the rest as desiring them to be witnesses of the wager.

The Zealots had a way of their own--and for sport often practiced it--of ascertaining whether a body were dead.

Drawing his blade the first ruffian pulled aside the woman’s robe and pierced her breast with the point of the weapon, an act followed by a faint moan, and a slight writhing of the figure.

“Thou hast lost thy bet, Malchus,” laughed the first ruffian. “She’s living.”

“She’s dead now, at any rate,” answered the second; and, furious at losing the wager, he drew his sword and stabbed the woman to the heart.

At this a dying man beside her spoke in hollow tones.

“In the name of God be merciful, and do the like by me. Thrust me through that my anguish may have an end.”

“Thou wishest to die? Then thou shalt live,” replied Malchus; and, sheathing his blade, he moved off with the rest of the Zealots, who laughed as though the affair were a merry jest.

When silence had descended upon the square again Vashti crept fearfully forth, and, after hesitating whether or not to return home, she resumed her slow and trembling way to Ophel, and arrived without further adventure at the house of Johanan ben Zacchai. It was a humble dwelling situated in a street that, like all others in the city, was as quiet as the tomb.

Vashti found the gate, as she expected, barred.

Before knocking she listened, and detected coming from within a sound that caused her heart to leap with hope, for it was a sound like that produced when corn is ground between two millstones.

Even in her dazed and frightened state of mind Vashti could not but think it imprudent to be grinding corn within hearing of the street, a street that might be traversed at any moment by ruffianly, food-seeking Zealots.

The household of Johanan were evidently not without grain; surely they would spare her just a little from their store?

She knocked at the gate, and the sound of the grinding, if such it were, instantly ceased.

“They think I am a Zealot,” she said with a wild little laugh.

She knocked a second and a third time, but received no reply; she called out her name so loudly that those within must have heard who the visitor was, but they made no response. A dead silence prevailed within.

Vashti withdrew to the middle of the street, and turned her despairing eyes towards the lattice over the gateway. No friendly face looked down at her; no face at all.

She turned sorrowfully away, but came again presently, and this she continued to do at intervals, beating piteously upon the gate, but all to no purpose.

Then did hope die within her. If Johanan ben Zacchai would not listen to the voice of a suppliant, there was none other in the city that would.

Nothing remained for her but to return home; but how could she, empty-handed, face the despairing gaze of her dying mother, the fearful, famishing eyes of little Arad, who quite expected to see his sister come back laden with food.

Loth to return home she wandered slowly and aimlessly through the streets and squares of the star-lit city.

In the Xystus that faced the half-burned palace of Agrippa she came upon a group of men, all bearing the signet-mark of famine--the skeleton limbs, the dark complexion, the sunken eyes of unnatural luster with the scared look in them.

Leaning upon staves they were listening to one of those self-deluded fanatics, so numerous at that time in Jerusalem--fanatics whose dream no reverses could destroy, the dream namely of a coming universal empire for the Jews; the darker and the more hopeless the situation seemed, the more fervent and enthusiastic became the faith of these false prophets, who did not relinquish their hopes till they saw the temple sink into everlasting night, and the plow drawn over the soil where once the palace of Zion had stood.

Vashti paused for a moment to listen to his wild harangue.

“Think you that Jehovah will let the place in which He has chosen to put His name fall into the hands of the uncircumcized heathen? Men, brethren, there is no contradiction in the Divine nature, and therefore He who decreed that the temple should be built can never decree that it shall be destroyed. Take heart and rejoice! The time foretold by the prophets is at hand: the heavens shall open, and the Messiah shall descend therefrom--yea! it is but a matter of a few hours now--to avenge His people. His feet shall stand upon Olivet, and with the breath of His mouth will He slay the host of Titus even as He slew the host of Sennacherib.”

And so speciously did he argue by texts drawn from the prophetical scriptures that his famishing auditors, with scarcely strength to stand, became as hopeful as the orator himself; they forgot their present sufferings; their faces brightened, and they turned their glance upward to the comet gleaming red in the sky, half-expecting to see it launch forth fiery death at the girdling hostile line that, “hushed in grim repose,” was patiently waiting the slow but certain doom of the city.

With a sigh Vashti passed on, and coming to a street corner beheld the emaciated figure of a man kneeling, in his hand a drawn bow with an arrow fitted thereto. Never had she seen eyes so fiercely wild, or an expression so painfully eager and expectant. Following the direction of his glance she saw that he was aiming at a pigeon which had just alighted upon the ground only a few yards distant. “Food, food! Life, life!” was the thought that frenzied his brain.

But Vashti could see what he could not, namely, that much nearer to the bird, and crouching down within a gateway was the skeleton figure of a woman, whose manner showed that she was waiting to snatch the prize from the archer. And so it proved. As the shaft flew true to the mark the woman tottered feebly from her hiding-place; her eyes sparkled with wild glee; she gave a demoniacal chuckle as she pounced upon the slain pigeon, and ghoul-like tore greedily at the raw flesh with her teeth.

At that sight there broke from the man a cry of surprise and despair, of agony and rage, a cry horrible yet pitiable to hear. “Thief! bitch! accursed!” he screamed. “Give me what is mine. Ah! she would devour it all! In the name of God give me a mouthful, a morsel, that I may live, and not die.”

As the speaker lurched forward in the endeavor to get at the thief his legs gave way beneath him, and he fell heavily to the ground; feebly struggling to his feet he staggered on again with intent to wreak vengeance upon the spoiler.

Outraged nature did the work for him.

The eater gorging herself to the full, and being long unused to the taking of so great an amount of sustenance, became suddenly convulsed, dropped to the ground in horrible contortions, and there and then died, her end being greeted with mocking laughter by the weakling pursuer, who, seemingly undeterred by her fate, knelt down, and plucking the remnant of the bird from the dead woman’s teeth began to gnaw it with his own.

Vashti, shuddering, turned away, and retracing her steps to Ophel, sought once more the house of Johanan ben Zacchai. But she stopped aghast ere reaching it.

Its gate was wide open now, hanging wrecked upon its hinges, with the battering-ram that had done the work lying within the entrance.

From the house came the cries as of an old man in pain.

“Give his limb another twist,” cried a voice that she recognized as that of Malchus the Zealot. “We’ll soon make the old graybeard tell where he has concealed his corn.”

At the same moment there broke forth from an upper chamber the thrilling screams of Johanan’s two daughters, painly calling upon their aged father to deliver them from the hands of the lewd and laughing Zealots; for John’s followers made it their boast that if there were a virgin in any house they entered there would be none there when they left.

With the blood about her heart congealing to ice Vashti fled, lest a like fate should befall her; fled, not knowing whither she went, not caring; fled, till she suddenly found herself facing a great black mass that rose up into the starry night. It was the wall of Zion, the huge rampart of masonry that lay between the Romans and victory, that lay, alas! betwixt herself and Crispus. She was near the Valley Gate, whose approaches as she saw were guarded by a small party of Zealots, while on the battlements above them slow-pacing sentinels kept their watch. Hastily Vashti retreated within the shadows ere she should be seen.

By the gate stood Simon the Black. An unpleasant odor, so palpable that one could almost taste it, hung in the air; and this was doubtless his reason for holding in his hand a perfume box whose fragrance he inhaled from time to time.

At intervals there came from beyond the city walls weird, plaintive cries, mysterious voices as of human creatures in pain; the sounds, borne on the wings of the night, seemed to come like arrows to the heart of Vashti, thrilling her with an unknown fear. The strange odor and the eerie sounds--what did they mean? The apparent unconcern of the men about the gate showed that to them at least these were familiar things.

Conversing apart with Simon was a somewhat sad-eyed man, by name Manneus, the scribe appointed to take note of all the dead carried forth through the Valley Gate; for be it known that the bodies of the dead as being like to create a plague if allowed to remain in the city were collected at night by paid agents of the Sanhedrim, thrown upon carts, and carried out to be promiscuously flung, without funeral rites and without burial, into the ravines that surrounded Jerusalem; all which matters were as yet unknown to Vashti.

“How many, think you, up to yester even have been borne forth from this gate?” asked Manneus of Simon.

“Twenty thousand, perhaps,” replied the Zealot, hazarding a guess.

“_One hundred and fifteen thousand, eight hundred and eighty_,”[30] returned Manneus, consulting his tablets.

Even Simon, little prone to emotion, was staggered by these figures.

“Fire of Gehenna!” he muttered. “And this is but one gate! How many from each of the other gates? Our Jewish brethren from foreign lands whose wish it is to be buried at Jerusalem seem to be having their wish,” he added grimly. “But, ah! whom have we here?”

This last question was caused by the action of Vashti, who, moved by some uncontrollable impulse, came tremblingly forward, and addressed to him a pitiful plaint for bread.

“Bread?” repeated the Zealot. “Why comest thou to me?”

“Because you are as a king in this city.”

“Captain,” said one of the Zealots, recognizing Vashti, “this damsel is of the Nazarenes, who were forever preaching the doom of the city. She is, moreover, the ward of Josephus, that traitor, who is high in the councils of the enemy.”

“A Nazarene, true. Yet,” answered Vashti, eager to seize upon any argument that might influence the Zealot chief in her favor, “yet did I not quit the city, when the Nazarenes left it, but have remained behind to share the fate of my fellow-citizens. In the name of God,” she continued, addressing Simon, “give me bread. I ask not for myself, but for a dying child. Give me but one loaf, and on the resurrection morning, when all deeds will be brought to light, this shall be counted to you for righteousness.”

“You shall have a loaf,” said Simon, moved strangely by her words, “you shall have a basket ... a basket filled with bread.” The bewildered Vashti could scarcely trust her hearing. “But ere you return home you must eat a morsel yourself, or you will faint by the way. Come with me.”

Vashti, loth to go with him, yet not daring to refuse, accompanied Simon to the tower adjacent to the Valley Gate. Entering the first room that he came to, the Zealot chief peremptorily ordered out of it three or four of his followers who were sitting there occupied with dice and wine.

“Here,” said he, addressing Vashti, when the men had withdrawn, “here are six dried grapes, a fig, and a morsel of bread. No more at present. Put a curb upon your appetite, if you would live.”

To Vashti’s mind there was something selfish in eating while thousands of her fellow-citizens were dying of want--doubly selfish, when she reflected that this food had perhaps been wrung by violence from the famishing people. Natural appetite, however, prevailed over sentiment; and with a strange feeling towards Simon, a feeling compounded of gratitude and repulsion, Vashti began the slow eating of what was to her a repast more delicious than that in the banquet-hall of Florus, though her enjoyment was somewhat marred by the unpleasant odor that seemed to cling around everything in this vicinity. That she did not know its cause seemed to surprise Simon. Perceiving that her ignorance was real and not feigned, he rose, and said, “Come with me, if you would learn.”

Vashti began to regret her curiosity, being all-anxious now to return home with the promised loaves. Not wishing, however, to offend the Zealot she followed him up a stone staircase, and through a doorway that opened upon the ramparts.

Simon, first handing her his perfume box, bade her look down over the battlements.

And Vashti looked.

It was a moonless night, but the sky was jeweled with stars whose faint light was just sufficient to give her a glimmering of what lay below. It was the light required for such a scene: the full blaze of the noonday sun would have made it a horror too great to be endured by human nerves.

“_They shall look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me!_”

Vashti, peering down, could dimly see that the deep and shadowy ravine of Hinnom--that ravine already regarded in Hebrew theology as the type of hell--was filled with the remains of the dead, who were to be counted not by hundreds, but by tens of thousands. The bodies lay, piled promiscuously, some clothed, some naked, in every possible stage of decay, from that of the newly dead to that of the whitened skeleton glimmering ghastly through the gloom.

The air that hung above and around the ravine was tainted with an effluvium so gross as to be all but palpable to the touch, and so loathsome that but for the perfume box Vashti would have sunk to the ground overpowered.

More dreadful still, from every part of the gloom came significant and horrid rustlings, intermingled with sounds like to the tearing of flesh by some sharp instrument.

“Mark!” said Simon.

He flung over a stone; at its sudden and startling descent a black cloud of ravens and vultures, gorged with human flesh, rose on the wing, high above the battlements, their slow-sailing shadows darkening the face of the sky.

Vashti, as they passed, drew back with a shudder, and as she did so, her eyes fell upon a sight still more startling and awful. _Now_ she knew the origin of the weird and midnight cries!

There, beyond the ravine, under the cold light of the pitiless stars, were rows upon rows of crosses; and to every cross was nailed a naked human form!

The number of these crosses was past all counting; they circled the whole city, extending as far back as the Roman wall, whose castellated outline was dimly visible from the battlements. How many of the crucified victims were dead; how many were bearing their sufferings in heroic silence; how many had reached the sullen stupor that is the immediate precursor of death, it was impossible to tell. Vashti might have thought all dead, but that every now and then some poor wretch, now in this quarter and now in that, lifting his hitherto bowed head would shiver convulsively, and would break the stillness of the night by a long-drawn mournful cry of pain, a cry that might have caused the coldest, sternest nature to weep, but seemed to have no effect upon Simon.

“In God’s name, who are these?” gasped Vashti.

“Jewish deserters. It is thus that Titus receives those that come to him from the city, nor do I pity them. Let them die; they deserve their doom. Mark,” he continued, “mark the ill-fortune that has attended all who have deserted the holy cause! In the early days of the siege Titus was wont to receive such renegades with favor, a favor, however, that proved the doom of many, who, eating too freely of the food given to them, burst, and so died.” He paused, with a vindictive smile, and then resumed. “They were succeeded by other deserters, who, ere leaving the city, swallowed gold pieces and precious stones, thinking to recover them after they had passed the Roman lines. Fatal avarice! The secret became known to the Syrian and Arabian allies deputed to take charge of these deserters; they slew them and cut open their bodies to get at the treasures. In this way were two thousand of them killed in one night.” Again he smiled vindictively. “At last Titus, growing stern, as he saw the little progress made by his arms, sent to our walls a herald to proclaim that he would receive no more deserters; let the whole body of the people come forth, or none. Regardless of this decree, fresh parties made their way to the Roman camp, to be sent back to the city, a shrieking train of victims, with their hands lopped off.” Again that vindictive smile. “And now,” added Simon, pointing to the ghastly scene before them, “now he hath taken to this way of dealing with them. _They are crucified to the number of five hundred a day!_”

The vengeance of history!

These were the men, and the sons of the men, who forty years earlier had cried “Crucify Him! crucify Him!” And now they themselves were crucified--some on the very site of Golgotha itself!--in such numbers that, in the language of Josephus, “room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies.” And the victims, if they but chose to look, could see overhead in the sky the red gleam of the heavenly sword. Stay! was it the figure of a sword, or was it not rather _the likeness of a cross_, intended to remind them of the greatest and most awful tragedy in the world’s history?

Vashti’s head swam with horror; a mist obscured her vision; air and landscape seemed slowly turning to one universal blood-red hue. Her wild wail went forth upon the night air:

“O God, have mercy upon this hapless city!”

It was past the sixth hour of the night when Vashti, with her basket of bread upon her arm, reached home.

Closing and barring the gate behind her, she went along the short passage, and crossed the little court.

Entering a chamber upon the ground floor she paused for a moment and stood in the attitude of listening. She had so expected to hear Arad’s plaintive cry for food that it was almost a disappointment to find the house as silent as the tomb. Evidently Arad was sleeping, unless indeed----! Her heart almost stood still at the dread thought that suddenly smote her. But no! she was alarming herself without cause. A two days’ fast, though it might very much weaken a child, would not kill him. Arad must be sleeping.

She smiled lovingly as she pictured his delight when he should awake and see what his sister had brought him.

If mother and son were sleeping it could not be otherwise that the house should be without sound; yet in the prevailing stillness that hung about the place like a tangible veil there was something so strange and oppressive as to fill Vashti with vague fears. Her tread on entering had sounded so hollow that she had paused, almost fearing to take a second step. For the first time in her life she feared the darkness.

Plucking up her courage, she moved through the gloom towards the stairway that stood in one corner of the room. When she was half-way across the floor her foot touched some object; moved by curiosity she stooped, and picking the thing up found it to be--_a long knife_!

Now when Vashti had last gone through this room there was no knife lying upon the floor; her sandal had become loose upon this very spot; she had knelt to tie the string, and the knife, had it been lying there at that time, could scarcely have failed to come within the ken of her vision. Evidently someone must have entered this room during her absence; doubtless Miriam.

There was nothing strange in the fact that her mother, if so minded, should leave the upper story and descend to the court, yet Vashti could not help wondering why Miriam should have removed the knife from its customary place upon the shelf, since it was the one used only in the culinary operations, this room being the kitchen of the little household. But that existing circumstances forbade the hypothesis, the knife might have been taken as evidence almost of the preparation of a meal.

As if expecting the darkness to furnish some clew Vashti looked vacantly around, and there upon the floor distant but a few feet, and scintillating through the gloom, was a something that had the semblance of an eye, an eye intently watching all her movements.

It stared at her a while, blinked, glittered again, then the eyelid seemed to close, and there was darkness where the thing had been.

Vashti gave a little insane laugh of relief, perceiving that what had frightened her was no eye at all, but a faint point of light upon the hearth, the last spark of some dying embers. It was clear that during her absence a fire had been kindled in this room, and by whom, if not by her mother? and this fact when taken with the knife would seem to point to the preparation of food. If so, by what means had Miriam become so fortunate? After what Vashti had seen that night it was scarcely credible that, Zealots excepted, there could be anyone in this famishing city so well provided as to be capable of giving relief to others. Such being the case, then, what was the meaning to be put upon the fire and the knife?

Instead of hastening at once to her mother’s room Vashti lingered in this chamber, impressed somehow by the belief that here was to be found the key to the mystery. Though entirely ignorant as to its nature, she nevertheless felt certain that she was on the verge of some startling discovery, and she trembled all over.

Slowly she drew near the hearth; over it the air still hung warm. Her feet pressed upon some light yielding material like cloth. Cloth it was, a little woollen garment belonging to Arad; nay more, certain fringes upon it told her that it was the little caftan he had been wearing when she last parted from him. What strange whim had induced her mother to deprive the child of his one and only garment? Had it been exchanged for another? If so, it was not easy to see the reason, or why the old one should have been brought down, and left lying by the hearth.

Wondering whether there were anything else here belonging to Arad she put forth her hands, and grasped a little girdle and two sandals.

A moment she stood in bewilderment: then, as the ghastly truth came rushing upon her mind, there broke from her a cry so awful as to seem scarcely human; the fear of the thing caused her hair to bristle, and the cold drops to start from every pore.

All the appalling tragedies she had seen that night--what were they compared with this?

She turned and ran up the staircase, her frenzy of grief giving her a strength so great that armed men could scarcely have had the power to stay her.

With a quick tread she entered the upper chamber. It was dark, yet not quite dark: the light of the stars seen through the open lattice sufficed to make the nearer objects faintly visible. Miriam lay in the middle of the apartment asleep upon her pallet. It was not to her that Vashti first turned. Though knowing well that she would not find him there, she nevertheless ran at once to Arad’s pallet.

It was empty!

She flew to her mother’s side, knelt, and peered shudderingly into the somnolent face, a face that wore at this moment the dull heavy air as of one whose animal wants are satisfied. Her mother actually _sleeping_, as if this were merely some ordinary night! sleeping, after such a deed as hers! Sleeping--she who ought never to sleep again!

There was little of the daughter left in Vashti as she fiercely shook the slumbering woman by the shoulder.

And the soul of the unhappy Miriam starting from blissful dreams to the dread reality of earthly things awoke to hear sounding through the gloom of night a voice that, like the voice of the accusing archangel, addressed her with the awful question:

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH ARAD?”