The City of Delight

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.