There thousands were congregated. A great bonfire had been kindled and
above the multitude, on a colossal architrave fallen at one end from
the giant columns that had supported it, stood a figure, redly
illuminated by the fire, tiny as compared to the immense ruin of its
high place, but Titan in its control over the wild mob below it.
It was a woman, a Jewess, dressed in faithful imitation of the archaic
garb of the prophetesses, mantled with a storm of flying black hair,
stripped of veil or cloak, and splendidly defiant of the restrictions
laid upon woman long after the days of Deborah.
Over the heads of the panting multitude she shook a pair of arms that
glistened for whiteness, and bewitched by the spell of their motion.
From under her half-fallen lids shot gleams of fire that transfixed
any upon whom they fell; from her supple body shaken at times with the
power of its own dynamic force her hearers caught the grosser
infection of physical excitement; they swayed with her as blown by the
wind; they ceased to breathe in her periods; they groaned as the
intensity of her fervor pressed upon them for response that they could
not shape in words; they wept, they shouted, they prophesied, and over
them swept ever the witchery of her wonderful voice, preaching
impiety--the worship of Seraiah!
Philadelphus looked at this frantic work with a creeping chill. He
knew the sorceress. Salome of Ephesus, who could send the sated
theaters wild with her appeal to their senses, had found enchantment
of a half-mad city not hard. Aside from the impiety, in fear of which
his own irreligious spirit stood, he saw suddenly opened to him the
immense scope of her influence. Not Simon, not John, not Titus, had
discovered the logical appeal to the city's unbalanced impulses. But
the reckless woman, robing herself in the ancient garb of the days to
which the citizens would revert, assuming the pose of a woman they had
sanctified, preaching the dogma they would hear, showing them the sign
that helped them most, held Jerusalem, at least for that hour, in her
hands.
He realized at once that to attempt to denounce her would expose him
to destruction at the wolfish hands of the frenzied mob. There were
not soldiers enough in the city to destroy her influence, for she had
achieved in her followers that infatuation that goes down to death
before it relinquishes its conviction. Her control was complete.
Seraiah was the anointed one, but the prophetess, the instigator, the
founder of the worship, as follows in all apostasies, was the final
recipient of the benefits of that devotion.
Philadelphus walked away from the sight of Salome's triumph. He had
surrendered instantly his hope of regaining the treasure. The whole of
mad Jerusalem had ranged itself with her to protect it. And Laodice
was not yet found.