The City of Delight

After the Ephesian had been swept in with his own company of pilgrims,

he saw that which even few of the new-comers had expected to see. The

immediate vicinity of the gate was laid waste. Up Mount Zion opposite

Hippicus and along the margin of the Tyropean Valley where the

Herodian and Sadducean palaces had seemed so fair from the north were

great blackened shells of walls and leaning pillars, partly buried in

ruin and rubbish. Far and wide the streets were littered with debris

and charred fragments of burned timbers. At another place on the

breast of Zion was a chaos of rock where a mansion had been literally

pulled down. Somewhere near Akra pale columns of pungent, wind-blown

smoke still rose from a colossal heap of fused matter that the

Ephesian could not identify. About it were neglected houses; not a

sign of festivity was apparent; windows hung open carelessly; the

hangings in colonnades were stripped away entirely or whipped loose

from the fastenings and abandoned to the winds. Numbers of dwellings

appeared to have been sacked; others were so closely barred and

fortified that their exteriors appeared as inhospitable as jails.

Confusion prevailed on the smoked and untidy marble Walk of the

Purified leading down from the Temple. Here those who held fast to the

Law met and contested for their old exclusiveness with wild heathen

Idumean soldiers, starvelings, ruffians and strange women from

out-lying towns. Far and wide were wandering crowds, surly, defiant,

discourteous, exacting. Manifestly it was the visitors who were the

aggressors. They had been overthrown and driven from their own into an

unsubjugated city which was secure. They felt the rage of the defeated

which are not subdued, and the resentment against another's unearned

immunity. The citizens of Jerusalem had not welcomed them and they

were enraged. Half a dozen fights of more or less seriousness were in

sight at once. A column of black wiry men in some semblance of uniform

pushed across the open space toward the Essene Gate. They took no heed

for any in their path. Those who could not escape were overturned and

trampled on. Meeting a rush at the gate they drew swords and coolly

hacked their way through screams of fear and pain and amazement. After

them went a wave of curses and complaint. Citizens against the

visitors; visitors against the citizens; soldiers against them all!

"And this cousin of mine meant to pacify all this!" the Ephesian

exclaimed to himself.

Jerusalem, that had for fifteen hundred years adorned herself at this

time with tabrets and had gone forth in the dance of them that make

merry, was drunken with wormwood and covered with ashes.

All at once the Ephesian saw four soldiers standing together and with

them, manifestly under their protection, was a Greek of striking

beauty. He wore on his fine head a purple turban embroidered with a

golden star.