CHAPTER IX

“LET US GO HENCE!”

It was the evening of Crispus’ first day in Jerusalem, and Rufus, who, as the Roman overlord of the temple, had free access to its outer courts during any hour of the day or night, now suggested a quiet and contemplative walk around its cloisters.

“Come!” said he, “and I will show you THE STRONGEST FORTRESS IN THE WORLD!”

By the glorious light of an Eastern moon, that silvered the sleeping city and the peaceful hills around it, the two Romans crossed the arch connecting the fortress Antonia with the northern side of the Temple Hill, the hill anciently known by the name of Mount Moriah.

They descended a flight of stairs and entered the northern cloister of the temple, a cloister divided into two long aisles by lines of marble columns, forty feet in height, and formed of marble, beautifully polished.

“Each of these columns,” remarked Rufus, “consists of a single block.”

The roof of the cloister was of cedar, curiously graven, and the pavement a mosaic of many colors.

This magnificent colonnade was reared upon the very edge of the scarped cliff, and extended in a direct line east and west for a length of more than one thousand feet.

“The temple-platform,” observed Rufus, “as you will see, after having gone round it, forms an irregular quadrangle, and occupies the flat summit of a precipitous rock. We’ll inspect all four sides in turn. First, what think you of this, the northern side?”

Crispus turned his eyes upon Antonia, frowning white in the moonlight from the other side of the ravine.

“Throw down that arch,” said he, “and you make this side of the temple practically unassailable, and--but whom have we here?” he added, breaking off suddenly.

Slowly making their way along the cloister came a band of men clothed in semi-military garb, and bearing spears. A few carried torches, whose yellow glare was reflected from the polished surface of column and pavement.

“Be it known to you,” said Rufus, “that the temple has _two_ captains, Roman and Jewish. While it is my duty from Antonia to keep watch _over_ the temple, it is the duty of yon officer to keep watch _within_ it. This is the Levitical guard going its round. Woe to the sentinel whom they find asleep. They’ll beat him with clubs, or wake him by setting fire to his clothing.”

“Who is the fierce-looking hero marching at their head?”

“That, my dear Crispus, is the rival captain of the temple, Eleazar, son of the ex-high priest Ananias, whom you have already seen at Cæsarea. Betwixt father and son is open war. Ananias, suave and polite, courts the good graces of the Romans; Eleazar, sullen and fierce, boasts his hatred of us. He is said to be secretly leagued with Zealot banditti, and to have known more than he ought of the doings of Simon the Black. Indeed, Quintus is of opinion that the fugitive Zealot, with the connivance of Eleazar, is at the present moment hiding within the sanctuary. If so, he is secure from arrest, for Cæsar himself may not enter there. So deep a scorn hath this Eleazar for Romans that he refuses to return their salutations. Be thyself a witness.”

The Levitical guard had by this time reached the place where the two Romans were standing.

“Peace to you, Eleazar,” said Rufus, raising his hand in salute.

But the Jewish captain marched past at the head of his guard, taking no notice whatever of the Roman.

Rufus laughed with good-humored contempt.

“What did I tell you?” said he to Crispus. “That was not well done, Eleazar,” he called out after the receding figure. “Johanan ben Zacchai makes it his boast[10] that he never yet let Gentile forestall him in giving the salaam.”

Speaking thus, Rufus led the way to the eastern cloister, which, extending in an even line due north and south, formed the second side of the irregular square.

“Now here we have a truly Titanic work,” he said. “When the temple was first planned by an ancient king called Solomon, he found the summit of the hill too small for his architectural ideas, so what did he do but rear a wall sheer up from the valley below till it was on a level with the top of the mount; the vacancy betwixt the wall and the mount was then filled in with earth and stone, and on the esplanade thus formed was built this grand colonnade, which we now see; hence its name, Solomon’s Colonnade. From the summit of yon pinnacle at the southeast corner the plumb-line falls a sheer descent of four hundred and fifty feet--at least so say the priests who have measured it. Cast your eye downward, and mark the depth!”

As Crispus leaned far over the stone balustrade, and ran his eye first to the right and then to the left along the vast mass of masonry, rising vertically in mid-air, he muttered: “The gods themselves would not dare attack the temple from this side.”

Far down, scarcely visible, glinted a slender line of water.

“The brook Cedron,” said Rufus, “flowing to-day, dry in summer. The name Cedron, or Black, is justly deserved, for into the rivulet flows the black blood of the daily sacrifices conducted thither by channels bored through the solid rock.”

“How name you yon fair hill in front of us?”

“The Mount of Olives, so called from its trees. Come, view we now the third side.”

They passed on to the southern cloister, which, like the eastern, was built upon a vast substructure of masonry rising in massive grandeur from the valley below.

“This,” said Rufus, “bears the name of the Royal Colonnade, as being the grandest of all, for whereas the other cloisters have but two rows of pillars, this has four. And mark them! Each column is a monolith, fifty feet in height, and as to its thickness, three men with joined hands can scarcely encircle it.”

This Royal Colonnade, open on the side towards the temple, was closed upon the other by a wall. The two, therefore, mounted a staircase and walked along its roof.

“Those houses whose roofs you see beneath us extending far to the southward, form the suburb of Ophel, the residence of the priests and their servants, the Levites and Nethinim, whose duty necessitates their living near the temple.”

“It seems to me,” muttered Crispus, as he gazed downwards, “that he would be a bold general who would venture to make his attack from the south side.”

Walking onward, they came to the last, or western cloister, whose edge overhung the ravine known as the Valley of Tyropæon, a deep cleft that completely severed the temple-mount both from Acra or the Lower City, which lay due west, and from Zion or the Upper City, which lay to the southwest.

The temple-hill and Mount Zion were joined by a stone bridge, a magnificent structure, being in length 354 feet, and having a roadway 50 feet broad; in the center the depth of the valley beneath was 225 feet!

“Well, what think you of this--the fourth side?”

“Destroy the bridge, and you make this part of the temple inaccessible.”

“Yet this was the side--there was no bridge then--that our great Pompey successfully stormed.”

“It speaks ill for the skill of the defenders.”

“But well for the courage of the Romans--eh? But I doubt whether even Pompey would have carried his assault had not Jewish superstition favored him.”

“In what way?”

“He was told that the Jews had such reverence for the Sabbath that they would not fight on that day unless actually attacked. He therefore spent every Sabbath in raising huge mounds, and the rest of the week in guarding them; at the end of twelve months he made his triumphal attack.”

“Would the Jews again act so supinely, think you?”

“I doubt it. Since then they have seen the folly of their ways.”

Having walked all round the colonnades to the point whence they set out, the two friends now passed into the spacious court open to the sky. In the middle of this court rose the Sanctuary, or the Temple properly so called.

“It stands, if you will believe the Jews, upon the very center of the earth’s surface,” remarked Rufus. “In the adytum the stone upon which the high priest deposits his censer upon the Day of Atonement is regarded as the navel of the earth.”

Crispus, approaching the edifice upon its north side, experienced a strange thrill as he beheld, just as it had appeared in the dream, the golden-latticed window through which he had flung the incendiary torch.

“Do you know, Rufus, to what room that window belongs?” he asked, pointing it out.

“’Tis one of the windows of the Hall Gazith, the chamber in which the Sanhedrim meet to try those accused on a capital charge. Among others condemned there, was the founder of the sect of the Christians, who worship their Master as a god; though, methinks, if he had aught of divinity in him he should have delivered himself from his enemies.”

They walked round to the east, the quarter that gave them the finest view of the edifice.

It was a fabric of white marble, inferior, doubtless, in point of beauty to the graceful temples of Greece, but far superior to them in size and magnificence; and as for solidity, Rufus was careful to point out to the wondering Crispus that some of the blocks composing the external wall were no less than sixty feet in length!

“A fortress within a fortress!” he murmured, viewing the fabric with the eye of a soldier. “He who captures the cloisters has but begun his work.”

But the glories hidden within the Sanctuary were not for the gaze of Gentiles. Around the whole of the edifice ran a low marble balustrade--the “middle wall of partition”--whose dwarf pilasters bore inscriptions in Greek and Latin, forbidding the alien to proceed further on pain of death.

Here and there, as Crispus could see, half-concealed in the shadows of the temple-wall, stood the dusky forms of sentinels, who, though to all appearances inert, were nevertheless keeping a jealous watch upon the two Romans.

The floor of the Sanctuary was not upon the same level as the floor of the Court of the Gentiles, but stood at an altitude of twenty-two feet above it, upon the summit of a solid platform of masonry.

This elevation was ascended by a stately flight of stairs leading up to a magnificent pylon, whose twofold gate was richly plated with Corinthian bronze, a composite metal, more esteemed in that age than silver or gold.

“The Eastern or Corinthian Gate,” remarked Rufus.

Though access to the temple was forbidden to the Romans, there was not wanting even upon its very forefront the sign of the Roman dominion.

Over this gateway was the golden image of an eagle with extended wings, a surprising sight in view of the Jewish hatred of sculpture.

“Placed there by Herod the Great out of compliment to Augustus, and though many a fiery Zealot has climbed up there with intent to hew it down, our procurators have determined to keep it there.”

Having taken as close a view of the edifice as was permissible, Crispus drew back to contemplate it from a distance.

He had all a Roman’s reverence for antiquity, and the thought that the smoke of the daily sacrifice had ascended from this temple for the space of more than a thousand years was well adapted to impress his imagination.

Hallowed by the white light of the moon, the fabric rose with solemn and majestic air, the very stillness resting upon it seeming to have in it something of the divine.

He was tempted almost to believe in the strange miracles said to have occurred here--above all in the permanent miracle asserted by every Jew that the dark, central shrine, curtained off from mortal view, and never trodden by human foot save once a year only, was the dwelling-place of the deity himself!

A light touch upon his arm ended this reverie, and Crispus, on turning, found himself looking into the eyes of the Princess Berenice--very lovely eyes they were, too!--yet in them he fancied he could detect a light as of fear, due perhaps to the wild belief that he had come to take a clandestine view of the temple as a preliminary to the flinging of the incendiary torch.

“What do you here, princess?”

“Keeping watch upon you,” she said with a laugh that was not all a laugh. “It is my habit to walk at night in these courts.”

Rufus at this juncture thought fit to slip quietly away, leaving the two together.

Crispus thought of the circumstances in which he had last seen the princess.

“Why look you so earnestly at me?” smiled Berenice, becoming conscious of a very attentive gaze on his part.

“I am wondering, princess, why eyes so beautiful and gracious as yours are now could look so pitilessly upon poor Vashti.”

“My love for my religion is such that it makes me cold, even cruel, to all who oppose it.”

Her statement was probably true in a general sense, but Crispus doubted whether she had been moved by religious zeal in the case of Vashti.

“Then you must hate me, who am likewise opposed to your religion?”

“Nay, you are not an apostate. You have never known the truth.”

And then, as if anxious to get away from the synagogue scene, in which she was conscious that she had not appeared to advantage in Crispus’ eyes, she pointed to the Sanctuary and said:

“Do you not think it beautiful?”

“’Twere wrong to think otherwise.”

“Too beautiful to be wantonly destroyed,” she said significantly.

“You see me without the fatal torch--as yet.”

“As yet?” she repeated, with a touch of fear in her voice. “You are not--you are not letting that dream still hold a place in your thoughts?”

“Whatever opposes Rome must be destroyed, even if it be a temple.”

“You would destroy our temple? You cannot,” she said, speaking with a vehemence that surprised, and even startled Crispus, “you cannot. It is beyond the power of Cæsar and his legions. Let all the nations of the earth league together for that end, and they would fail. The temple is eternal, and cannot be destroyed, for our prophets have so assured us. The world was made for the sake of the temple,”--she was but repeating the doctrine of the rabbis--“and so long as the world shall stand, so long will the temple stand. When the last day shall come,” she continued, her eyes shining with all the enthusiasm of a devotee, “there will still be seen the smoke of the sacrifice ascending from the altar. It is the place loved of God, the place where He has chosen to put His name forever.”

So spoke Berenice, and perhaps never in the history of the world did words meet with a rebuke more startling and more significant.

For scarcely had she finished speaking when there rose upon the air a mysterious something that caused her to grasp the arm of Crispus with a convulsive start.

From the hidden interior of the Sanctuary there came a sound that bore--to compare it with earthly things--some resemblance to the rising of a wind; faint at first, its volume increased, little by little, till, issuing from the Sanctuary, what seemed to be a rush of air swept through the temple-courts.

A wind, and yet no wind! It had no effect upon external objects: not a fold of Crispus’ toga waved; not a hair of the princess was stirred.

What was happening was like nothing earthly; the sense of a mysterious and unseen presence struck an awe to the soul of Crispus. If he had never before believed in the supernatural, he believed in it now; if he had never before felt fear, he felt it now. The hand which his first impulse had sent to his sword dropped powerlessly to his side again. What availed the might of a legion, or of ten thousand such, against invisible and spiritual powers?

Terror had laid hold of Berenice; half-swooning she sank upon her knees, her hands still clinging to the wrist of Crispus; but for his detaining hold she would have fallen prone upon the pavement.

Closing her eyes as if to shut out some awful vision that was about to appear, she faintly gasped with blanched lips: “_The bath col!_”

She was not alone in her belief. From different parts of the temple-court persons, hitherto unseen by Crispus--priests, Levites, Nethinim--had suddenly started into view, and were gazing up at the lofty temple, whose long and magnificent façade gleamed like a bank of pearl in the moonlight. And one cry only broke from their lips, to die away in a feeling of mingled awe and terror:

“THE BATH COL! THE BATH COL!”

Crispus was sufficiently familiar with this phrase to know that it meant the voice of the deity.

Did this “sound as of a rushing mighty wind” really emanate from the Hebrew God who was said to ride upon the whirlwind, and to speak in the voice of the thunder?

That was the belief of the Jews assembled in the court; they were about to hear the awful voice that had spoken to their fathers from Sinai!

Slowly--very slowly--the quivering, continuous flow of sound died away. For a brief space there was a weird spell of silence; then came a sudden clangor, startling by contrast with the previous stillness, a clangor like that of hollow brass struck by a giant hand.

All eyes turned instantly upon the Corinthian Gate of the Sanctuary. That great gate, whose folding-doors of plated bronze were so ponderous as to require the united strength of twenty men to turn them on their hinges, was now slowly revolving inwards as if yielding to some invisible pressure from without.

Wider and wider grew the space between the two doors, till at last they had revolved so far back that they could revolve no farther.

The gate had opened apparently of its own accord!

And now came an awe-inspiring sequel.

From the interior of the Sanctuary issued a solemn voice, crying in the Hebrew tongue:

“LET US GO HENCE!”[11]

All trembled at the sound; none more than Crispus.

“The voice that spoke in my dream!”

This moment of supreme and thrilling terror was followed by a sequence of sounds suggestive of the departure of a vast multitude. It seemed as if ten thousand feet were descending the lofty stairs of the Corinthian Gate, and were treading the pavement of the forecourt. Yet neither shape nor shadow met the gaze of the appalled and trembling Jews, who had drawn together in one dense throng as if for protection against--they knew not what!

As for Crispus, had he wished to describe his feelings at this awful moment he might have employed the language of the sacred writer: “Fear came upon me and a trembling that made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; it stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof!”

For there was a flowing of air past him, as if some long procession were going by; he could detect the sound of rustling garments and of sighing voices; yet had his life depended upon the action, he durst not put forth his hand to test whether the unseen train that was gliding past were palpable to the touch.

The sounds passed on, taking their way through the eastern cloister; and, mounting upon the wings of the night, they melted away in the direction of Olivet.

Long, long after the mysterious voices had ceased, the Jews, filled with a divine awe, stood speechless and motionless, as if fearful lest their speaking should call forth the wrath of departing deity.

Among the group was the famous rabbi, Johanan ben Zacchai. He was the first to find tongue.

Pointing to the interior of the Corinthian gateway, with its walls and roof fashioned from the cedar of Libanus, he cried in a solemn tone:

“The end of the temple hath come, for this is that which was spoken by the prophet, saying, ‘Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars!’”[12]

And at that word “fire,” Berenice looked at Crispus and trembled.