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

every bounty and every plague. See the Tishbite and his servant Elisha! See the sad son of Hilkiah, and him, the seer of visions, by the river of Chebar! And of the three children of Judah who refused the image of the Babylonian, lo! that one who, in the feast to the thousand lords, so confounded the astrologers. And yonder⁠—O my son, kiss the dust again!⁠—yonder the gentle son of Amoz, from whom the world has its promise of the Messiah to come!”

In this passage the fan had been kept in rapid play; it stopped now, and her voice sank low.

“You are tired,” she said.

“No,” he replied, “I was listening to a new song of Israel.”

The mother was still intent upon her purpose, and passed the pleasant speech.

“In such light as I could, my Judah, I have set our great men before you⁠—patriarchs, legislators, warriors, singers, prophets. Turn we to the best of Rome. Against Moses place Caesar, and Tarquin against David; Sylla against either of the Maccabees; the best of the consuls against the judges; Augustus against Solomon, and you are done: comparison ends there. But think then of the prophets⁠—greatest of the great.”

She laughed scornfully.

“Pardon me. I was thinking of the soothsayer who warned Caius Julius against the Ides of March, and fancied him looking for the omens of evil which his master despised in the entrails of a chicken. From that picture turn to Elijah sitting on the hilltop on the way to Samaria, amid the smoking bodies of the captains and their fifties, warning the son of Ahab of the wrath of our God. Finally, O my Judah⁠—if such speech be reverent⁠—how shall we judge Jehovah and Jupiter unless it be by what their servants have done in their names? And as for what you shall do⁠—”

She spoke the latter words slowly, and with a tremulous utterance.

“As for what you shall do, my boy⁠—serve the Lord, the Lord God of Israel, not Rome. For a child of Abraham there is no glory except in the Lord’s ways, and in them there is much glory.”

“I may be a soldier then?” Judah asked.

“Why not? Did not Moses call God a man of war?”

There was then a long silence in the summer chamber.

“You have my permission,” she said, finally; “if only you serve the Lord instead of Caesar.”

He was content with the condition, and by-and-by fell asleep. She arose then, and put the cushion under his head, and, throwing a shawl over him and kissing him tenderly, went away.

VI

The good man, like the bad, must die; but, remembering the lesson of our faith, we say of him and the event, “No matter, he will open his eyes in heaven.” Nearest this in life is the waking from healthful sleep to a quick consciousness of happy sights and sounds.

When Judah awoke, the sun was up over the mountains; the pigeons were abroad in flocks, filling the air with the gleams of their white wings; and off southeast he beheld the Temple, an apparition of gold in the blue of the sky. These, however, were familiar objects, and they received but a glance; upon the edge of the divan, close by him, a girl scarcely fifteen sat singing to the accompaniment of a nebel, which she rested upon her knee, and touched gracefully. To her he turned listening; and this was what she sang:

The Song

“Wake not, but hear me, love!
Adrift, adrift on slumber’s sea,
Thy spirit call to list to me.
Wake not, but hear me, love!
A gift from Sleep, the restful king,
All happy, happy dreams I bring.

“Wake not, but hear me, love!
Of all the world of dreams ’tis thine
This once to choose the most divine.
So choose, and sleep, my love!
But ne’er again in choice be free,
Unless, unless⁠—thou dream’st of me.”

She put the instrument down, and, resting her hands in her lap, waited for him to speak. And as it has become necessary to tell somewhat of her, we will avail ourselves of the chance, and add such particulars of the family into whose privacy we are brought as the reader may wish to know.

The favors of Herod had left surviving him many persons of vast estate. Where this fortune was joined to undoubted lineal descent from some famous son of one of the tribes, especially Judah, the happy individual was accounted a Prince of Jerusalem⁠—a distinction which sufficed to bring him the homage of his less favored countrymen, and the respect, if nothing more, of the Gentiles with whom business and social circumstance brought him into dealing. Of this class none had won in private or public life a higher regard than the father of the lad whom we have been following. With a remembrance of his nationality which never failed him, he had yet been true to the king, and served him faithfully at home and abroad. Some offices had taken him to Rome, where his conduct attracted the notice of Augustus, who strove without reserve to engage his friendship. In his house, accordingly, were many presents, such as had gratified the vanity of kings⁠—purple togas, ivory chairs, golden paterae⁠—chiefly valuable on account of the imperial hand which had honorably conferred them. Such a man could not fail to be rich; yet his wealth was not altogether the largess of royal patrons. He had welcomed the law that bound him to some pursuit; and, instead of one, he entered into many. Of the herdsmen watching flocks on the plains and hillsides, far as old Lebanon, numbers reported to him as their employer; in the cities by the sea, and in those inland, he founded houses of traffic; his ships brought him silver from Spain, whose mines were then the richest known; while his caravans came twice a year from the East, laden with silks and spices. In faith he was a Hebrew, observant of the law and every essential rite; his place in the synagogue and Temple knew