The City of Delight

Hundreds, rushing upon the wall, though a goodly distance from the

point at which the strange man had mounted, climbed it and beat off

the sentries.

And the foremost who reached the top saw the Roman Tower directly

opposite Seraiah shudder suddenly and sink in a roaring cloud of dust

upon itself to the earth.

Instantly the maniac below broke the tense silence with a scream that

was heard in the paralyzed Roman camp: "It is He, the Deliverer! Come!"

Of the thousands of Jews that heard the madman's cry, every heart

credited it. Hundreds melted away suddenly, as if stricken with terror

at what they might see; other hundreds scrambled down from their

places to run purposelessly, crying aimless things to the night over

the city; yet others covered their faces with their arms and fell in

their places, expecting the end of the world; and of the rest, the

less imaginative, the more composed and the more curious, remained on

the walls to see enacted a further miracle. Uproar had broken out

instantly among the four stolid legions of Titus on the Assyrian

bivouac. Lights flashed out everywhere; great running to and fro could

be distinguished; rapid trumpet-calls and the prolonged roll of drums

from company quarters to quarters were echoed back from Antonia and

from Hippicus. The startled shouts of commanders; the nervous dropping

of arms; the sharp excited response to roll-call; the sound of

sentries challenging, the curt response by countersign, showed

everywhere irregularities and the symptoms of panic in the immovable

ranks of Titus.

Seraiah meanwhile had disappeared from his place as mysteriously as he

had come.

Many of the Jews who remained on the wall believed that he had passed

into the Roman camp and was troubling it. The fall of the tower, and

the confusion it had wrought in the Roman camp, never occurred to them

to have been fortuitous incidents with which Seraiah had nothing to

do. Of the thousands that witnessed that miracle, most of them were

convinced that the hour had come.

Meanwhile Jerusalem was roaring with excitement. The city was ready

for a Messiah. Seraiah had arisen at the psychological moment. Earlier

the Jews would have been too critical to accept him readily; later

they would have reviled him for coming too late. Whatever his advent

lacked in thunders, in darkness, voices, and shaking of the earth, had

been passed by his miraculous work against the Romans.

Philadelphus, who had seen the fall of the tower, and had dropped down

from the wall as soon as he had explained it all to himself, came upon

new disorders. Great concourses of awakened Jews were hurrying to the

walls to see what had happened, or to behold the Roman army wiped out

by the Angel of Death as the army of Sennacherib had perished. Others

collected at the end of the Tyropean Bridge and watched the pinnacle

of the Temple for the miracle which should restore the city. But the

burned ruin where the Herodian palace had stood was the center of the

most characteristic frenzy.