Ben Hur - Lew Wallace (sci fi books to read .TXT) 📗

the joy in her face, thought not once how wrinkled and tawny it was. She knelt at his feet, clasped his knees, and kissed his hands over and over; and when he could he put the lank gray hair from her cheeks, and kissed them, saying, “Good Amrah, have you nothing, nothing of them⁠—not a word⁠—not one little sign?”

Then she broke into sobbing which made him answer plainer even than the spoken word.

“God’s will has been done,” he next said, solemnly, in a tone to make each listener know he had no hope more of finding his people. In his eyes there were tears which he would not have them see, because he was a man.

When he could again, he took seat, and said, “Come, sit by me, Amrah⁠—here. No? then at my feet; for I have much to say to these good friends of a wonderful man come into the world.”

But she went off, and stooping with her back to the wall, joined her hands before her knees, content, they all thought, with seeing him. Then Ben-Hur, bowing to the old men, began again:

“I fear to answer the question asked me about the Nazarene without first telling you some of the things I have seen him do; and to that I am the more inclined, my friends, because tomorrow he will come to the city, and go up into the Temple, which he calls his father’s house, where, it is further said, he will proclaim himself. So, whether you are right, O Balthasar, or you, Simonides, we and Israel shall know tomorrow.”

Balthasar rubbed his hands tremulously together, and asked, “Where shall I go to see him?”

“The pressure of the crowd will be very great. Better, I think, that you all go upon the roof above the cloisters⁠—say upon the Porch of Solomon.”

“Can you be with us?”

“No,” said Ben-Hur, “my friends will require me, perhaps, in the procession.”

“Procession!” exclaimed Simonides. “Does he travel in state?”

Ben-Hur saw the argument in mind.

“He brings twelve men with him, fishermen, tillers of the soil, one a publican, all of the humbler class; and he and they make their journeys on foot, careless of wind, cold, rain, or sun. Seeing them stop by the wayside at nightfall to break bread or lie down to sleep, I have been reminded of a party of shepherds going back to their flocks from market, not of nobles and kings. Only when he lifts the corners of his handkerchief to look at someone or shake the dust from his head, I am made known he is their teacher as well as their companion⁠—their superior not less than their friend.

“You are shrewd men,” Ben-Hur resumed, after a pause. “You know what creatures of certain master motives we are, and that it has become little less than a law of our nature to spend life in eager pursuit of certain objects; now, appealing to that law as something by which we may know ourselves, what would you say of a man who could be rich by making gold of the stones under his feet, yet is poor of choice?”

“The Greeks would call him a philosopher,” said Iras.

“Nay, daughter,” said Balthasar, “the philosophers had never the power to do such thing.”

“How know you this man has?”

Ben-Hur answered quickly, “I saw him turn water into wine.”

“Very strange, very strange,” said Simonides; “but it is not so strange to me as that he should prefer to live poor when he could be so rich. Is he so poor?”

“He owns nothing, and envies nobody his owning. He pities the rich. But passing that, what would you say to see a man multiply seven loaves and two fishes, all his store, into enough to feed five thousand people, and have full baskets over? That I saw the Nazarene do.”

“You saw it?” exclaimed Simonides.

“Ay, and ate of the bread and fish.”

“More marvellous still,” Ben-Hur continued, “what would you say of a man in whom there is such healing virtue that the sick have but to touch the hem of his garment to be cured, or cry to him afar? That, too, I witnessed, not once, but many times. As we came out of Jericho two blind men by the wayside called to the Nazarene, and he touched their eyes, and they saw. So they brought a palsied man to him, and he said merely, ‘Go unto thy house,’ and the man went away well. What say you to these things?”

The merchant had no answer.

“Think you now, as I have heard others argue, that what I have told you are tricks of jugglery? Let me answer by recalling greater things which I have seen him do. Look first to that curse of God⁠—comfortless, as you all know, except by death⁠—leprosy.”

At these words Amrah dropped her hands to the floor, and in her eagerness to hear him half arose.

“What would you say,” said Ben-Hur, with increased earnestness⁠—“what would you say to have seen that I now tell you? A leper came to the Nazarene while I was with him down in Galilee, and said, ‘Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.’ He heard the cry, and touched the outcast with his hand, saying, ‘Be thou clean’; and forthwith the man was himself again, healthful as any of us who beheld the cure, and we were a multitude.”

Here Amrah arose, and with her gaunt fingers held the wiry locks from her eyes. The brain of the poor creature had long since gone to heart, and she was troubled to follow the speech.

“Then, again,” said Ben-Hur, without stop, “ten lepers came to him one day in a body, and falling at his feet, called out⁠—I saw and heard it all⁠—called out, ‘Master, Master, have mercy upon us!’ He told them, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priest, as the law requires; and before you are come there ye shall be healed.’ ”

“And were they?”

“Yes. On the road going their infirmity left them, so that there was nothing to remind us of