The City of Delight

"It is time to be a Jew or against the Jews," she said gravely. "There

is no middle ground concerning Judea at this hour."

Serious words from the lips of a woman in whom a man expects to find

entertainment are obtrusive, a paradox. Still the new generosity in

his heart for this girl made any manner she chose, engaging, so that

it showed him the sight of her face and gave him the sound of her

voice.

"Seeing," he said, "that it is the hour of the Jewish hope, is it

politic for us to declare ourselves for its benefits?"

"The call at this hour," she exclaimed reproachfully, "is to be great

in sacrifice--not for reward. It is the word of the prophets that we

shall not attain glory until we have suffered for it. We have not yet

made the beginning."

She touched so familiarly on his own thoughts which had haunted him

since ambition had awakened in him in his boyhood, that his interest

in his own hope surged to the fore.

"How goes it in Jerusalem?" he asked earnestly.

"Evilly, they say," she answered, "but I have not been in the city.

Yet you see Judea. That which has destroyed it threatens the city.

Jews have no friends abroad over the world. We need then our own, our

own!"

"Trust me, lady, for a good Jew. I have said that I had been one,

because I admit how far I have drifted from my people. But I am going

back!"

Somehow that strong avowal touched the deep springs of her grief. She

knew the pleasure that her father would have felt in it. With the

greatness of his sacrifice in mind, she filled with the determination

that his work should not have been in vain.

She rose and flung back the cumbrous striped mantle on her shoulders

and put out her hands to the Maccabee.

"Hast seen these pilgrims going to the Passover?" she exclaimed, with

color rising as her emotion grew. "All day they have passed; army

after army of Jews, not only strong, but filled with the spirit that

makes men die for a cause! Hast seen Judea, which was once the land of

milk and honey? Wasted! a sight to make Jews gnash their teeth and die

of hate and rage! What hast thou said of Jerusalem? 'The perfection of

beauty and the joy of the whole earth!' threatened with this same

blight that hath made a wilderness of Canaan! If the hour and the

circumstance and the cause will but unite us, this unweaponed host

will stretch away at once in majestic orders of tens of

thousands--legions upon legions that would shame Xerxes for numbers

and that first Cæsar for strength. Then--oh, I can see that calm

battle-line pass like the ocean tide over the stony Roman front, and

forget as the sea forgets the pebbles that opposed it!"