The City of Delight

The madness on Jerusalem poured like an overwhelming flood into the

cavern under the ruin of the Herodian palaces. There was Hesper, with

most of his Gibborim gathered, preparing to proceed to the defense of

the First Wall in Akra against which the Roman would hurl himself in

the morning.

For days he had controlled his men only by the force of his fierce

will. Restlessness, little short of turbulence, had changed his six

hundred from earnest recruits to bright-eyed, contentious,

irresponsible enthusiasts whom only intimidation could manage. They

seemed to be balanced, prepared, ready at the least whisper in the

wind to scatter madly, each in his own direction, after a vagary,

albeit the end were destruction.

Throughout these latter days the Maccabee had become strained and

unnatural in his manner. There was a vehemence in all he did which

seemed to be a final resolution against despair. His decisions were

arbitrary; his methods extreme. Laodice, sensing something climacteric

in his atmosphere, kept aloof from him, and regarded him from the dusk

of her corner with wonder and a pity that she could not explain. The

Christian on the other hand seemed always in an unobtrusive way to be

at the Maccabee's elbow. The apparition with the long white hair,

however, ran away and was found on the streets by the Christian and

brought back to the cavern, where he hid in a dark shadow in the

remote end of the crypt and was not seen.

Of late the cavern was always full of suppressed excitement;

unpremeditated conferences among the Gibborim, which Hesper harshly

forbade; and general sharp resentment against imposed regulations and

military drill. On several occasions the six hundred were sent in

defense of the walls only by sheer force of their leader's will-power.

And there they fell in at once with the irregular methods of the

Idumeans and fanatics that fought each after his own liking, and the

careful instruction of the Maccabee was disregarded. Only so long as

he cowed them, they obeyed him; and he seemed to feel, as they seemed

to indicate, that when that thing happened which all Jerusalem

indefinitely expected and could not name, his control over them would

be lost beyond restoration.

On the night of the fall of the Roman tower, the Maccabee's forces had

been withdrawn for rest to their retreat and at midnight were formed

again for return to the fortifications.

By the strange inscrutable spread of rumor, sweeping with the air, the

tidings of the miracle and the rise of Seraiah poured in upon the

restive hundreds that the Maccabee was attempting to form in his

fortress. It came like the gradual velocity of a burning star across

the sky. From the ranks nearest the exit from the burrow the murmur

issued, growing into intelligible sound, mounting to the wildness of

hysteria and prevailing wholly over the Gibborim in the space between

heart-beats. Everywhere they cast down their spears and their weapons,

everywhere they gazed at him with brilliant threatening eyes and cried

in loud voices so that the things each mad mind put into expression

were lost in a great unintelligible raving.