Part 11 (1/2)
”I speak not of G.o.ds made by men's hands,” answered Sadoc. ”The time must surely come ere long when there will be one wors.h.i.+p of the true G.o.d through all the earth, as there is one sun that s.h.i.+nes over the whole heaven. Clouds may obscure it for a season, but no less doth it exist in its warmth and splendour, giving vitality to creation and light to day.”
”When there is but one wors.h.i.+p, there will be but one dominion,” argued a.s.sarac. ”The altar and the temple will then become the judgment-seat and throne, while the high-priest will be the true monarch and ruler over all. Listen, my brother; for indeed here in the house of your captivity you have found a friend. I am a priest of Baal, as you behold; but in truth I am no hot-brained votary who mistakes his own intoxicated frenzy for the inspiration of a G.o.d. My subordinates may gird their loins to leap and run and gesticulate, shedding their own blood the while in crimson streams. Such extravagances are foreign to my nature, and below the dignity of my wors.h.i.+p. I am a priest of Baal, but I am also an a.s.syrian descended from a line of warriors, and to me the greatness of my country is the paramount object and interest of life.
What else have such as I, who are severed, without being alienated, from their kind? To extend an empire founded by our father Nimrod from the Bactrian mountains to the Southern sea, to behold the standards of Merodach waving on the confines of Armenia and over the gates of Memphis, while conscious that I, a.s.sarac the priest, had set in motion the armies of victory and guided the march of triumph, were worth all the fire-wors.h.i.+pper's dreams of luminous immortality, all the starry thrones of the G.o.ds who are supposed to be looking down in judgment on us even now.”
”And when your wishes have been fulfilled,” said Sadoc quietly--”wishes only to be accomplished through much bloodshed, cruelty, and sin--you will not be one whit happier than now.”
The other laughed in scorn.
”Is fame nothing?” he asked. ”Is power nothing? Is it nothing to cast down the mighty from their golden thrones, and to raise the lowly, as I have raised you to-night, from fetters of iron and a bed on the cold earth? Teach me the lore of your wors.h.i.+p, as I will impart to you my own secrets of priestcraft, and hereafter--ay, sooner than you may think--I will set you in judgment over a score of nations, in a purpled robe, with a sceptre in your hand.”
”_My_ lore!” repeated Sadoc, with a sad smile. ”You would deem it beneath your understanding, as it would be above your practice. It is but to do justice, and to love mercy, dealing with man as before the face of G.o.d.”
”But surely you have learned important secrets amongst the Egyptians?”
urged a.s.sarac, somewhat disappointed with this exposition of the Israelite's simple creed. ”Surely they have taught you mysteries of magic and the art of divination, in which they boast their proficiency, handed down, as they profess, through scores of dynasties and hundreds of successive generations. Or is it true that your nation have been the teachers, and Egypt, with all her pride, is but the pupil of a people who took with them from this very land the art that we, its present inhabitants, have lost, the spells that compel gigantic spirits to work out their behests--rearing colossal buildings, causing wide tracts of desert to blossom like the rose, bidding the very waters of the great deep to subside and overflow at their will?”
”You know not our nation,” answered Sadoc, ”nor have you felt the iron hand of our oppressors, who practice the forbidden arts of which you speak, but with no result that hath ever spared groan or stripe to a single captive. The Israelite must toil under the scourge for his scanty morsel of bread. The great river indeed rises and falls at the command of one who is mightier than our task-masters, and who will not surely forget his people for ever in their bonds; but for the huge shapeless structures--the gigantic monster idols of the South--they are reared by a magic of which blood, sweat, and hunger const.i.tute the spells, under the fierce eye that never sleeps, the cruel hand that is never raised but to urge, and smite and destroy. Yet when our fathers were driven by famine into Egypt they found there one of their own people, reigning wisely over a prosperous nation, and second only to Pharaoh on the throne; they found themselves honoured guests where now they are degraded prisoners, friends and allies where now they are hated and despised, masters, in truth, where they are slaves! And slaves to those who are themselves sunk in the degradation of a vile and brutal idolatry.”
His eye blazed, and his very beard seemed to bristle with anger, while he spoke. It was in such flashes of indignation or excitement that the likeness of kindred races was to be noted on the features of Israelite and a.s.syrian.
”You scorn the G.o.ds of Nimrod,” replied a.s.sarac, with a sneer; ”but the fathers from whom we claim a common descent have taught _us_, at least, a n.o.bler impersonation of our wors.h.i.+p than the goose, the serpent, the stork, the locust, and the cat! If we choose the lotus, the fir-cone, or the beetle to convey an idea of that reproductive power in nature, always existing even when dormant, as the flower in the bud, or the blade in the seed, at least we do not hang our temples with carvings of the humblest animals, the most loathsome reptiles, and the meanest utensils of our daily life! It is baser, I grant you, to adore the stars than the principle which gives them light, baser to kneel before the sculptured image than the G.o.d it represents; but basest surely of all wors.h.i.+p is that practised by the cruel Egyptian, the enemy whom _we_ have humbled, the master who is grinding _your_ people into dust!”
”Our G.o.d will surely free us,” said Sadoc, in a low mournful tone. ”It cannot be that we, the lineal descendants of his favoured servant, are to remain for ever in the house of bondage, eating the bitter morsel of slavery, weeping tears of blood under the task-master's las.h.!.+ But we have neither arms nor leaders; there is no proven harness in our dwellings, nor sword, nor s.h.i.+eld, nor spear. How are we to go out from our enemies in the garb of peace, with our wives and children in our hands? And yet, I pray that it may come to this--I, for one, would march out fearlessly to die in the wilderness rather than gather another armful of straw, bake one more brick for the useless structures that only bear witness to our sorrows and our shame.”
The pride of race, the intense consciousness of a peculiar destiny, in all ages an inheritance of the sons of Abraham, gave to the words of Sadoc a truth and bitterness, marked with no slight satisfaction by the scheming priest of Baal.
”Hands that have toiled so skilfully for their task-masters,” said he, ”can surely strike a blow in their own behalf. Courage that has borne long years of suffering and privation will not fail at the moment of liberation and revenge. You and yours are of our blood and lineage. You shall be no captives in Babylon, as you have been in Egypt. This very night I will take order for your food and lodging--nay, fear not, they shall be found you without the temple, if indeed you entertain any scruples as to entering the abode of Baal--and you shall return to your own people in safety and honour, as a son returns to the dwelling of his father with a gift in his hand. You will tell them that here, in the great city, our warlike a.s.syrians look on the Israelites as their kinsmen and friends; that when the oppressed rises against the oppressor, and the children of Terah resolve once for all to throw off the Egyptian yoke, they will see a cloud rising out of the desert from the trampling of horses, countless as locusts in a west wind--they will hear a thousand trumpets sounding far and wide from the hosts of the Great King!”
The Israelite's eye sparkled and his cheek glowed but he answered solemnly,
”It must be a mightier king than yours, who leads us forth into the wilderness out of the house of our captivity.”
CHAPTER XIII
MOTHER AND SON
Not the least sumptuous range of halls and chambers in the queen's palace had been devoted, from his boyhood, to the accommodation of her son. Here, surrounded by his own servants, he had lived ever since he could walk alone in princely state and magnificence, imitating, though on a less extended scale, the splendour of the Great King's court, and exacting from his attendants those ceremonious observances which somewhat chafed his father's spirit, causing the fiery old warrior to break out in words and gestures savouring rather of the swordsman's impatience than the monarch's dignity. Here too he had been trained under the queen's own eye in manly exercises befitting his rank, practising mimic warfare on the wide terraces of the royal dwelling, and even hunting the lion in dangerous earnest through its s.p.a.cious paradise, a wilderness in the heart of the swarming city.
It had been the policy of Semiramis, as it was her pleasure, to keep the future monarch under her own eye and within her immediate influence, teaching him to depend on her alone for all his occupations and amus.e.m.e.nts, thus obtaining an ascendancy over his young mind, which daily custom rendered so easy and natural, that he never attempted to shake it off.
Arrogant at the feast, valorous in the fray, reckless and unscrupulous in the gratification of every pa.s.sing desire, every whim of the moment, he was yet in his mother's presence the same loving wayward child, who, though wilful and petulant, had ever looked to her alone for succour and encouragement, had run to her knee with a bruised skin or a tear-stained face, and would have begged of her, with equal confidence, a bunch of grapes and a string of pearls worth a king's ransom.
It was not strange then, that, waking from his heavy slumbers after the banquet, with a vague impression of some unfulfilled desire burning at his heart, his first wish was for his mother's presence, even before he remembered the purpose for which he wanted her a.s.sistance and advice.
Semiramis, on this the morning after his return from a campaign in which her boy had won no slight reputation as a warrior, pa.s.sing into his chamber according to custom, found him, as she had often found him before, tossing, heated, and restless on his couch, pus.h.i.+ng his short dishevelled locks off his brow, while he turned on her a glance, half mirthful, half imploring, from eyes deep liquid and beautiful as her own.
The queen's head was tired, her dress arranged with the utmost skill and care, while in her gait and bearing there was a dignity of repose no less graceful than becoming; but if her dark locks had been unbound, her robes shaken into disorder, and her fair face heated with the flush of mirth, pleasure, or excitement, surely never had been seen so wondrous a resemblance as existed between that unquiet youth on the couch and the beautiful woman who bent over him to lay her hand against his hot forehead with a gesture of endearment and caress.
”What ails my boy?” asked Semiramis, looking fondly down on her graceless offspring. ”Was the triumph yesterday so long and wearisome?