Alroy by Benjamin Disraeli (best thriller novels of all time txt) 📕

water, each basin was replenished with the purest quicksilver._ 'In a lofty pavilion of the gardens, one of those basins and fountains so delightful in a sultry climate, was replenished, not with water, but with the purest quicksilver.' --_Gibbon_, vol. x, from Cardonne.]

[Footnote 32: page 78.-_Playing with a rosary of pearls and emeralds_. Moslems of rank are never without the rosary, sometimes of amber and rare woods, sometimes of jewels. The most esteemed is of that peculiar substance called Mecca wood.]

[Footnote 33: page 78.--_The diamond hilt of a small poniard._ The insignia of a royal female.]

[Footnote 34: page 83.--_You have been at Paris_. Paris was known to the Orientals at this time as a city of considerable luxury and importance. The Embassy from Haroun Alraschid to Charlemagne, at an earlier date, is of course recollected.]

[Footnote 35: page 90.--_At length beheld the lost capital of his fathers._ The finest view of Jerusalem is from the Mount of Olives. It is little altered since the period when David Alroy is supposed to have gazed upon it, but it is enriched by the splendid Mosque of Omar, built by the Moslem conquerors on the supposed site of the temple, and which, with its gardens, and arcades, and courts, and fountains, may fairly be described as the most imposing of Moslem fanes. I endeavoured to enter it at the hazard of my life. I was detected, and surrounded by a crowd of turbaned fanatics, and escaped with difficulty; but I saw enough to feel that minute inspection would not belie the general character I formed of it from the Mount of Olives. I caught a glorious glimpse of splendid courts, and light aify gates of Saracenic triumph, flights of noble steps, long arcades, and interior gardens, where silver fountains spouted their tall streams amid the taller cypresses.]

[Footnote 36: page 91.--_Entered Jerusalem by the gate of Zion_. The gate of Zion still remains, and from it you descend into the valley of Siloah.]

[Footnote 37: page 94.-_ King Pirgandicus._ According to a Talmudical story, however, of which I find a note, this monarch was not a Hebrew but a Gentile, and a very wicked one. He once invited eleven famous doctors of the holy nation to supper. They were received in the most magnificent style, and were then invited, under pain of death, either to eat pork, to accept a pagan mistress, or to drink wine consecrated to idols. After long consultation, the doctors, in great tribulation, agreed to save their heads by accepting the last alternative, since the first and second were forbidden by Moses, and the last only by the Rabbins. The King assented, the doctors drank the impure wine, and, as it was exceedingly good, drank freely. The wine, as will sometimes happen, created a terrible appetite; the table was covered with dishes, and the doctors, heated by the grape, were not sufficiently careful of what they partook. In short, the wicked King Pirgandicus contrived that they should sup off pork, and being carried from the table quite tipsy, each of the eleven had the mortification of finding himself next morning in the arms of a pagan mistress. In the course of the year all the eleven died sudden deaths, and this visitation occurred to them, not because they had violated the law of Moses, but because they believed that the precepts of the Rabbins could be outraged with more impunity than the Word of God.]

[Footnote 38: page 94.--_And conquered Julius Caesar._ This classic hero often figures in the erratic pages of the Talmud.]

[Footnote 39: page 94.--_The Tombs of the Kings._ The present pilgrim to Jerusalem will have less trouble than Alroy in discovering the Tombs of the Kings, though he probably would not as easily obtain the sceptre of Solomon. The tombs that bear this title are of the time of the Asmonean princes, and of a more ambitious character than any other of the remains. An open court, about fifty feet in breadth, and extremely deep, is excavated out of the rock. One side is formed by a portico, the frieze of which is sculptured in a good Syro-Greek style. There is no grand portal; you crawl into the tombs by a small opening on one of the sides. There are a few small chambers with niches, recesses, and sarcophagi, some sculptured in the same flowing style as the frieze. This is the most important monument at Jerusalem; and Dr. Clarke, who has lavished wonder and admiration on the tombs of Zachariah and Absalom, has declared the Tombs of the Kings to be one of the marvellous productions of antiquity.]

[Footnote 40: Page 95.--'_Rabbi Hillel_ was one of the most celebrated among the Jewish Doctors, both for birth, learning, rule, and children. He was of the seed of David by his mother's side, being of the posterity of Shephatiah, the son of Abital, David's wife. He was brought up in Babel, from whence he came up to Jerusalem at forty years old, and there studied the law forty years more under Shemaiah and Abtalion, and after them he was President of the Sanhedrim forty years more. The beginning of his Presidency is generally conceded upon to have been just one hundred 'years before the Temple was destroyed; by which account he began eight-and-twenty years before our Saviour was born, and died when he was about twelve years old. He is renowned for his fourscore scholars.'--_Lightfoot,_ vol. ii. p. 2008.

The great rival of Hillel was Shammai. Their controversies, and the fierceness of their partisans, are a principal feature of Rabbinical history. They were the same as the Scotists and Thomists. At last the Bath Kol interfered, and decided for Hillel, but in a spirit of conciliatory dexterity. The Bath Kol came forth and spake thus: 'The words both of the one party and the other are the words of the living God, but the certain decision of the matter is according to the decrees of the school of Hillel. And henceforth, whoever shall transgress the decrees of the school of Hillel is punishable with death.']

[Footnote 41: page 97.--_A number of small, square, low chambers._ These excavated cemeteries, which abound in Palestine and Egypt, were often converted into places of worship by the Jews and early Christians. Sandys thus describes the Synagogue at Jerusalem in his time.]

[Footnote 42: page 08.--_Their heads mystically covered._ The Hebrews cover their heads during their prayers with a sacred shawl.]

[Footnote 43: page 98.--_Expounded the law to the congregation of the people._ The custom, I believe, even to the present day, among the Hebrews, a remnant of their old academies, once so famous.]

[Footnote 44: page 99.--_The Valley of Jehoshaphat and the Tomb of Absalom._ In the Vale of Jehoshaphat, among many other tombs, are two of considerable size, and which, although of a corrupt Grecian architecture, are dignified by the titles of the tombs of Zachariah and Absalom.]

[Footnote 45: page 101.--_The scanty rill of Siloah._ The sublime Siloah is now a muddy rill; you descend by steps to the fountain which is its source, and which is covered with an arch. Here the blind man received his sight; and, singular enough, to this very day the healing reputation of its waters prevails, and summons to its brink all those neighbouring Arabs who suffer from the ophthalmic affections not uncommon in this part of the world.]

[Footnote 46: page 102.--_Several isolated tombs of considerable size_. There are no remains of ancient Jerusalem, or the ancient Jews. Some tombs there are which may be ascribed to the Asmonean princes; but all the monuments of David, Solomon, and their long posterity, have utterly disappeared.]

[Footnote 47: page 103.--_Are cut strange characters and unearthly forms_. As at Benihassan, and many other of the sculptured catacombs of Egypt.]

[Footnote 48: page 104.--_A crowd of bats rushed forward and extinguished his torch._ In entering the Temple of Dendara, our torches were extinguished by a crowd of bats.]

[Footnote 49: page 104.--_The gallery was of great extent, with a gradual declination._ So in the great Egyptian tombs.]

[Footnote 50: page 105.--_The Afrite, for it was one of those dread beings._ Beings of a monstrous form, the most terrible of all the orders of the Dives.]

[Footnote 51: page 106.--_An avenue of colossal lions of red granite._ An avenue of Sphinxes more than a mile in length connected the quarters of Luxoor and Carnak in Egyptian Thebes. Its fragments remain. Many other avenues of Sphinxes and lion-headed Kings may be observed in various parts of Upper Egypt.]

[Footnote 52: page 107.--_A stupendous portal, cut out of the solid rock, four hundred feet in height, and supported by clusters of colossal Caryatides._ See the great rock temple of Ipsambul in Lower Nubia. The sitting colossi are nearly seventy feet in height. But there is a Torso of a statue of Rameses the Second at Thebes, vulgarly called the great Memnon, which measures upwards of sixty feet round the shoulders.]

[Footnote 53: page 109.--_Fifty steps of ivory, and each step guarded by golden lions._ See 1st Kings, chap. x. 18-20.]

[Footnote 54: page 120.--_Crossed the desert on a swift dromedary_. The difference between a camel and a dromedary is the difference between a hack and a thorough-bred horse. There is no other.]

[Footnote 55: page 121.--_That celestial alphabet known to the true Cabalist_. See Note 11.]

[Footnote 56: page 133.--_The last of the Seljuks had expired._ The Orientals are famous for their massacres: that of the Mamlouks by the present Pacha of Egypt, and of the Janissaries of the Sultan, are notorious. But one of the most terrible, and effected under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances, was the massacre of the Albanian Beys by the Grand Vizir, in the autumn of 1830. I was in Albania at the time.]

[Footnote 57: page 136.--_ The minarets were illumined._ So, I remember, at Constantinople, at the commencement of 1831 at the departure of the Mecca caravan, and also at the annual fast of Ramadan.]

[Footnote 58: page 138.--_One asking alms with a wire run through his cheek._ Not uncommon. These Dervishes frequent the bazaars.]

[Footnote 59: page 142.--_One hundred thousand warriors were now assembled._ In countries where the whole population is armed, a vast military force is soon assembled. Barchochebas was speedily at the head of two hundred thousand fighting men, and held the Romans long in check under one of their most powerful emperors.]

[Footnote 60: page 143.--_Some high-capped Tatar with despatches._ I have availed myself of a familiar character in Oriental life, but the use of a Tatar as a courier in the time of Alroy is, I fear, an anachronism.]

[Footnote 61: page 144.--_Each day some warlike Atabek, at the head of his armed train, poured into the capital of the caliphs._ I was at Yanina, the capital of Albania, when the Grand Vizir summoned the chieftains of the country, and I was struck by their magnificent arrays each day pouring into the city.]

[Footnote 62: page 153.--_It is the Sabbath etc_. 'They began their Sabbath from sunset, and the same time of day they ended it.'--Talm. Hierosolym. in _Sheveith_, fol. 33, col. I. The eve of the Sabbath, or the day before, was called the day of the preparation for the Sabbath.--Luke xxiii. 54.

'And from the time of the evening sacrifice and forward, they began to fit themselves for the Sabbath, and to cease from their works, so as not to go to the barber, not to sit in judgment, &c.; nay, thenceforward they would not set things on working, which, being set a-work, would complete their business of themselves, unless it would be completed before the Sabbath came--_as wool was not put to dye, unless it could