The City of Delight

Laodice stiffened in the Maccabee's clasp.

"Dost thou hear?" she whispered. "It may be true!"

He shook his head that he had bowed upon her shoulder.

"Let us go," she urged. "Perchance he has comfort for us. Come,

Hesper; let us see what he has for the forlorn."

"Who?" he asked dully.

"They say the Deliverer has come."

He shook his head again, but with her two hands she lifted his face

from its refuge, and urging with her eyes and her hands and her lips

she led him toward the stairs. The Christian looked after them.

"For there shall arise false Christs; and false prophets, and shall

shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they

shall deceive the very elect," he said sorrowfully.

The horror of the city augmented hour by hour. The Jerusalem Laodice

locked upon now was infinitely more afflicted than the one she had

seen in the daylight days before.

The walls were now outlined by fire which illuminated all the city

that lay directly beneath the beacons. To the north gnomish outlines

by hundreds against the flames showed where the soldiers of the

factionists were placing the topmost stones upon an inner wall or

curtain erected just within the Old Wall, which was by this time

shaking and cracking under the assaults of a great siege-engine

without. Titus, awakened by the fall of his tower, had immediately

renewed the attack, although the morning was still some hours distant.

But the citizens were no longer disinterested, no longer wrapped in

hopelessness and dull misery.

Hungry, sleepless, houseless, diseased and mad though they were, their

hollow eyes gleamed now with hope that was almost defiant. Around the

Maccabee and Laodice roared the comment of the multitude.

"They say he climbed to the summit of the outer wall overlooking

Tophet and remains there a target for the Roman arrows, which rebound

from him!" cried one.

"One of John's men says that the heads of the arrows are blunted and

the most of them snapped in two when they are picked up."

"The Romans have ceased to shoot at him!"

"They say that his footprints in the dust on the Tyropean Bridge are

Hebrew letters writing 'Elia' in gold!"

"It is said that the inner Temple is rocking with trumpet blasts and

that John is struck dead!"

"They say that those who believe in him shall ask for whatever they

would have and have it!"

"The breaches in the First Wall have been healed; the old rock is back

in its place!"

"They say that the dead beyond the wall in Tophet are prophesying!"

"There is a bolt of lightning fixed in the sky over Titus' camp. We

are called to go forth and see it fall!"

A voice swept by distantly crying that a woman had eaten her child.

Crazed Posthumus, self-elected guardian of the Law, with the sacred

roll under his arm, declaimed, without any of his audience attending,

that prophecy which this horror fulfilled.