Part 16 (2/2)

No sooner had I greeted and welcomed my brother, than I turned to Isaac and saluted him, I am persuaded, with scarcely less cordiality.

'I sincerely bless the G.o.ds,' said I, 'that you have escaped the perils of two such pa.s.sages through the desert, and are safe in Palmyra. May every wish of your heart, concerning your beloved Jerusalem, be accomplished. In the keeping of Demetrius will you find not only the single talent agreed upon in case you returned, but the two which were to be paid had you perished. One such tempest upon the desert, escaped, is more and worse than death itself met softly upon one's bed.'

'Now, Jehovah be praised,' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Isaac, 'who himself has moved thy heart to this grace! Israel will feel this bounty through every limb, it will be to her as the oil of life.'

'And my debt,' said Calpurnius, 'is greater yet, and should in reason be more largely paid. Through the hands of Demetrius I will discharge it.'

'We are all bound to you,' said Fausta, 'more than words can tell or money pay.'

'You owe more than you are perhaps aware of to the rhetoric of Isaac,' added Calpurnius. 'Had it not been for the faithful zeal and cunning of your messenger in his arguments not less than his contrivances, I had hardly now been sitting within the walls of Palmyra.'

'But then again, n.o.ble Roman,' said Isaac, 'to be honest, I ought to say what I said not--for it had not then occurred--in my letter to thy brother, how by my indiscretion I had nearly brought upon myself the wrath, even unto death, of a foul Persian mob, and so sealed thy fate together with my own. Ye have heard doubtless of Manes the Persian, who deems himself some great one, and sent of G.o.d? It was noised abroad ere I left Palmyra, that for failing in a much boasted attempt to work a cure by miracle upon the Prince Hormisdas, he had been strangled by order of Sapor. Had he done so, his love of death-doing had at length fallen upon a proper object, a true child of Satan. But as I can testify, his end was not such, and is not yet. He still walks the earth, poisoning the air he breathes, and deluding the souls of men. Him I encountered one day, the very day I had despatched thy letter, in the streets of Ecbatana, dogged at the heels by his twelve ragged apostles, dragging along their thin and bloodless limbs, that seemed each step ready to give way beneath the weight, little as it was, they had to bear. Their master, puffed up with the pride of a reformer, as forsooth he holds himself, stalked by at their head, drawing the admiration of the besotted people by his great show of sanct.i.ty, and the wise saws which every now and then he let drop for the edification of such as heard. Some of these sayings fell upon my ear, and who was I, to hear them and not speak? Ye may know that this false prophet has made it his aim to bring into one the Magian and Christian superst.i.tions, so that by such incongruous and deadly mixture he might feed the disciples of those two widely sundered religions, retaining, as he foolishly hoped, enough of the faith of each to satisfy all who should receive the compound. In doing this he hath cast dirt upon the religion of the Jew, blasphemously teaching that our sacred books are the work of the author of evil, while those of Christ are by the author of good. With more zeal, it must be confessed, than wisdom, seeing where I was and why I was there, I resisted this father of lies, and withstood him to his face. 'Who art thou, bold blasphemer,' I said, 'that takest away the G.o.dhead, breaking into twain that which is infinite and indivisible? Who art thou to tread into the dust the faith of Abraham, and Moses, and the prophets, imputing their words, uttered by the spirit of Jehovah, to the great enemy of mankind? I wonder, people of Ecbatana, that the thunders of G.o.d sleep, and strike him not to the earth as a rebel--nay, that the earth cleaveth not beneath him and swalloweth him not up, as once before the rebels Korah, Dathan, and Abiram;' and much more in the same mad way, till while I was yet speaking, those lean and hungry followers of his set upon me with violence, crying out against me as a Jew, and stirring up the people, who were nothing unwilling, but fell upon me, and throwing me down, dragged me to a gate of the city, and casting me out as I had been a dead dog, returned themselves like dogs to their vomit--that accursed dish of Manichean garbage. I believed myself for a long while surely dead; and in my half conscious state took shame to myself, as I was bound to do, for meddling in the affairs of Pagan misbelievers--putting thy safety at risk. Through the compa.s.sion of an Arab woman dwelling without the walls, I was restored and healed--for whose sake I shall ever bless the Ishmaelite. I doubt not, Roman, while I lay at the hut of that good woman, thou thoughtest me a false man?'

'I could not but think so,' said Calpurnius, 'and after the strong desire of escape which you had at length kindled, I a.s.sure you I heaped curses upon you in no stinted measure.'

'But all has ended well and so all is well,' said Fausta, 'and it was perhaps too much to expect, Isaac, that you should stand quietly by and hear the religion of your fathers traduced. You are well rewarded for what you did and suffered, by the light in which your tribe will now regard you, as an almost-martyr, and owing to no want of will, or endeavor on your part, that almost did not end in quite. Hannibal, good Isaac, will now see to your entertainment.'

'One word if it please you,' said Isaac, 'before I depart. The gentile despises the Jew. He charges upon him usury and extortion. He accuses him of avarice. He believes him to subsist upon the very life blood of whomsoever he can draw into his meshes. I have known those who have firm faith that the Jew feeds but upon the flesh and blood of Pagan and Christian infants, whom, by necromantic power, he beguiles from their homes. He is held as the common enemy of man, a universal robber, whom all are bound to hate and oppress. Reward me now with your belief, better than even the two gold talents I have earned, that all are not such. This is the charity, and all that I would beg; and I beg it of you, for that I love you all, and would have your esteem. Believe that in the Jew there is a heart of flesh as well as in a dog. Believe that some n.o.ble ambition visits his mind as well as yours. Credit it not--it is against nature--that any tribe of man is what you make the Jew. Look upon me, and behold the emblem of my tribe. What do you see? A man bent with years and toil; this ragged tunic his richest garb; his face worn with the storms of all climates; a wanderer over the earth; my home--Piso, thou hast seen it--a single room, with my good dromedary's furniture for my bed at night, and my seat by day; this pack my only apparent wealth. Yet here have I now received two gold talents of Jerusalem!--what most would say were wealth enough, and this is not the tythe of that which I possess. What then? Is it for that I love obscurity, slavery, and a beggar's raiment, that I live and labor thus, when my wealth would raise me to a prince's state? Or is it that I love to sit and count my h.o.a.rded gains? Good friends, for such you are, believe it not. You have found me faithful and true to my engagements; believe my word also. You have heard of Jerusalem, once the chief city of the East, where stood the great temple of our faith, and which was the very heart of our nation, and you know how it was beleaguered by the Romans, and its very foundations rooted up, and her inhabitants driven abroad as outcasts, to wander over the face of the earth, with every where a country, but no where a home. And does the Jew, think you, sit down quietly under these wrongs? Trajan's reign may answer that. Is there no patriotism yet alive in the bosom of a Jew? Will every other toil and die for his country and not the Jew? Believe me again, the prayers which go up morning, noon and night, for the restoration of Jerusalem, are not fewer than those which go up for Rome or Palmyra. And their deeds are not less; for every prayer there are two acts. It is for Jerusalem! that you behold me thus in rags, and yet rich. It is for her glory that I am the servant of all and the scorn of all, that I am now pinched by the winters of Byzantium, now scorched by the heats of Asia, and buried beneath the sands of the desert. All that I have and am is for Jerusalem. And in telling you of myself, I have told you of my tribe. What we do and are is not for ourselves, but for oar country. Friends, the hour of our redemption draweth nigh. The Messiah treads in the steps of Zen.o.bia! and when the East shall behold the disasters of Aurelian--as it will--it will behold the restoration of that empire, which is destined in the lapse of ages to gather to itself the glory and dominion of the whole earth.'

Saying these words, during which he seemed no longer Isaac the Jew, but the very Prince of the Captivity himself, he turned and took his departure.

Long and earnest conversation now ensued, in which we received from Calpurnius the most exact accounts of his whole manner of life during his captivity; of his early sufferings and disgraces, and his late honors and elevation; and gave in return similar details concerning the history of our family and of Rome, during the same period of time. I will not pretend to set down the narrative of Calpurnius. It was delivered with a grace which I can by no means transfer to these pages. I trust you may one day hear it from his own lips. Neither can I tell you how beautiful it was to see Fausta hanging upon his words, with a devotion that made her insensible to all else--her varying color and changing expression showing how deeply she sympathized with the narrator. When he had ended, and we had become weary of the excitement of this first interview, Fausta proposed that we should separate to meet again at supper. To this we agreed.

According to the proposal of Fausta, we were again, soon as evening had come, a.s.sembled around the table of the princely Gracchus.

When we had partaken of the luxuries of the feast, and various lighter discourse had caused the time to pa.s.s by in an agreeable manner, I said thus, turning to my brother:

'I would, Calpurnius, that the temper of one's mind could as easily be changed as one's garments. You now seem to me, having put off your Persian robes, far more like Piso than before. Your dress, though but in part Roman and part Palmyrene, still brings you nearer. Were it wholly Roman it were better. Is nothing of the Persian really put off, and nothing of the Roman put on, by this change?'

'Whatever of the Persian there was about me,' replied Calpurnius, 'I am free to say I have laid aside with my Persian attire. I was a Persian not by choice and preference, I need scarcely a.s.sure you, but by a sort of necessity, just as it was with my costume. I could not procure Roman clothes if I would. I could not help too putting off the Roman--seeing how I was dealt by--and putting on the Persian. Yet I part with whatever of the Persian has cleaved to me without reluctance--would it were so that I could again a.s.sume the Roman--but that can never be. But Isaac has already told you all.'

'Isaac has indeed informed me in his letter from Ecbatana, that you had renounced your country, and that it was the expectation of war with Rome that alone had power to draw you from your captivity. But I have not believed that you would stand by that determination. The days of republican patriotism I know are pa.s.sed, but even now under the empire our country has claims and her children owe her duties.'

'The figure is a common one,' Calpurnius answered, 'by which our country is termed a parent, and we her children. Allow it just. Do I owe obedience to an unjust or tyrannical parent? to one who has abandoned me in helplessness or exposed me in infancy? Are not the natural ties then sundered?'

'I think not,' I replied; 'no provocation nor injury can justify a parricidal blow. Our parent is our creator--in some sense a G.o.d to us. The tie that binds us to him is like no other tie; to do it violence, is not only a wrong, but an impiety.'

'I cannot think so,' he rejoined. 'A parent is our creator, not so much for our good as his own pleasure. In the case of the G.o.ds this is reversed: they have given us being for our advantage, not theirs. We lie under obligation to a parent then, only as he fulfils the proper duties of one. When he ceases to be virtuous, the child must cease to respect. When he ceases to be just, or careful, or kind, the child must cease to love. And from whomsoever else then the child receives the treatment, becoming a parent, that person is to him the true parent. It is idle to be governed by names rather than things; it is more, it is mischievous and injurious.'

'I still am of opinion,' I replied, 'that nature has ordained what I have a.s.serted to be an everlasting and universal truth, by the instincts which she has implanted. All men, of all tribes, have united in expressions of horror against him who does violence to his parents. And have not the poets truly painted, when they have set before us the parricide, forever after the guilty act, pursued by the Furies, and delivered over to their judicial torments?'

'All instincts,' he replied, 'are not to be defended: some animals devour their own young as soon as born. Vice is instinctive. If it be instinctive to honor, and love, and obey a vicious parent, to be unresisting under the most galling oppression, then I say, the sooner reason usurps the place of instinct the safer for mankind. No error can be more gross or hurtful, than to respect vice because of the person in whom it is embodied, even though that person be a parent. Vice is vice, injustice is injustice, wrong is wrong, wheresoever they are found; and are to be detested and withstood. But I might admit that I am in an error here; and still maintain my cause by denying the justice of the figure by which our country is made our parent, and our obligations to her made to rest on the same ground. It is mere fancy, it is a nullity, unless it be true, as I think it is, that it has been the source of great mischiefs to the world, in which case it cannot be termed a nullity, but something positively pernicious. What age of the world can be named when an insane devotion to one's country has not been the mother of war upon war, evil upon evil, beyond the power of memory to recount? Patriotism, standing for this instinctive slavery of the will, has cursed as much as it has blessed mankind. Men have not reasoned, they have only felt: they have not inquired, is the cause of my country just--but is it her cause? That has ever been the cry in Rome. ”Our country! our country!--right or wrong--our country!” It is a maxim good for conquest and despotism; bad, for peace and justice. It has made Rome mistress of the world, and at the same time the scourge of the world, and trodden down into their own blood-stained soil the people of many a clime, who had else dwelt in freedom. I am no Roman in this sense, and ought never to have been. Admit that I am not justified in raising my hand against the life of a parent--though if I could defend myself against violence no otherwise, I should raise that hand--I will never allow that I am to approve and second with my best blood all the acts of my country; but when she errs am bound, on the other hand, to blame, and if need be oppose. Why not? What is this country? Men like myself. Who enact the decrees by which I am to be thus bound? Senators, no more profoundly wise perhaps, and no more irreproachably virtuous, than myself. And do I owe their judgments, which I esteem false, a dearer allegiance than I do to my own, which I esteem right and true? Never: such patriotism is a degradation and a vice. Rome, Lucius, I think to have dealt by me and the miserable men who, with me, fell into the hands of Sapor, after the manner of a selfish, cold-hearted, unnatural parent, and I renounce her, and all allegiance to her. I am from this hour a Palmyrene, Zen.o.bia is my mother, Palmyra my country.'

'But,' I could not but still urge, 'should no distinction be made between your country and her emperor? Is the country to rest under the imputation which is justly perhaps cast upon him? That were hardly right. To renounce Gallienus, were he now emperor, were a defensible act: But why Rome or Aurelian?'

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