Ben Hur by Lew Wallace (best romance ebooks TXT) 📕

“Lepers, lepers! They⁠—my mother and Tirzah⁠—they lepers! How long, how long, O Lord!”

One moment he was torn by a virtuous rage of sorrow, next by a longing for vengeance which, it must be admitted, was scarcely less virtuous.

At length he arose.

“I must look for them. They may be dying.”

“Where will you look?” asked Malluch.

“There is but one place for them to go.”

Malluch interposed, and finally prevailed so far as to have the management of the further attempt entrusted to him. Together they went to the gate over on the side opposite the Hill of Evil Counsel, immemorially the lepers’ begging-ground. There they stayed all day, giving alms, asking for the two women, and offering rich rewards for their discovery. So they did in repetition day after day through the remainder of the fifth month, and all the sixth. There was diligent scouring of the dread city on the hill by lepers to whom the rewards offered were mighty incentives, for they were only dead in law. Over and over again the gaping tomb down by the well was invaded, and its tenants subjected to inquiry; but they kept their secret fast. The result was failure. And now, the morning of the first day of the seventh month, the extent of the additional information gained was that not long before two leprous women had been stoned from the Fish Gate by the authorities. A little pressing of the clue, together with some shrewd comparison of dates, led to the sad assurance that the sufferers were the Hurs, and left the old questions darker than ever. Where were they? And what had become of them?

“It was not enough that my people should be made lepers,” said the son, over and over again, with what intensity of bitterness the reader may imagine; “that was not enough. Oh no! They must be stoned from their native city! My mother is dead! she has wandered to the wilderness! she is dead! Tirzah is dead! I alone am left. And for what? How long, O God, thou Lord God of my fathers, how long shall this Rome endure?”

Angry, hopeless, vengeful, he entered the court of the khan, and found it crowded with people come in during the night. While he ate his breakfast, he listened to some of them. To one party he was specially attracted. They were mostly young, stout, active, hardy men, in manner and speech provincial. In their look, the certain indefinable air, the pose of the head, glance of the eye, there was a spirit which did not, as a rule, belong to the outward seeming of the lower orders of Jerusalem; the spirit thought by some to be a peculiarity of life in mountainous districts, but which may be more surely traced to a life of healthful freedom. In a short time he ascertained they were Galileans, in the city for various purposes, but chiefly to take part in the Feast of Trumpets, set for that day. They became to him at once objects of interest, as hailing from the region in which he hoped to find readiest support in the work he was shortly to set about.

While observing them, his mind running ahead in thought of achievements possible to a legion of such spirits disciplined after the severe Roman style, a man came into the court, his face much flushed, his eyes bright with excitement.

“Why are you here?” he said to the Galileans. “The rabbis and elders are going from the Temple to see Pilate. Come, make haste, and let us go with them.”

They surrounded him in a moment.

“To see Pilate! For what?”

“They have discovered a conspiracy. Pilate’s new aqueduct is to be paid for with money of the Temple.”

“What, with the sacred treasure?”

They repeated the question to each other with flashing eyes.

“It is Corban⁠—money of God. Let him touch a shekel of it if he dare!”

“Come,” cried the messenger. “The procession is by this time across the bridge. The whole city is pouring after. We may be needed. Make haste!”

As if the thought and the act were one, there was quick putting away of useless garments, and the party stood forth bareheaded, and in the short sleeveless under-tunics they were used to wearing as reapers in the field and boatmen on the lake⁠—the garb in which they climbed the hills following the herds, and plucked the ripened vintage, careless of the sun. Lingering only to tighten their girdles, they said, “We are ready.”

Then Ben-Hur spoke to them.

“Men of Galilee,” he said, “I am a son of Judah. Will you take me in your company?”

“We may have to fight,” they replied.

“Oh, then, I will not be first to run away!”

They took the retort in good humor, and the messenger said, “You seem stout enough. Come along.”

Ben-Hur put off his outer garments.

“You think there may be fighting?” he asked, quietly, as he tightened his girdle.

“Yes.”

“With whom?”

“The guard.”

“Legionaries?”

“Whom else can a Roman trust?”

“What have you to fight with?”

They looked at him silently.

“Well,” he continued, “we will have to do the best we can; but had we not better choose a leader? The legionaries always have one, and so are able to act with one mind.”

The Galileans stared more curiously, as if the idea were new to them.

“Let us at least agree to stay together,” he said. “Now I am ready, if you are.”

“Yes, let us go.”

The khan, it should not be forgotten, was in Bezetha, the new town; and to get to the Praetorium, as the Romans resonantly styled the palace of Herod on Mount Zion, the party had to cross the lowlands north and west of the Temple. By streets⁠—if they may be so called⁠—trending north and south, with intersections hardly up to the dignity of alleys, they passed rapidly round the Akra district to the Tower of Mariamne, from which the way was short to the grand gate of the walled heights. In going, they overtook, or were overtaken by, people like themselves stirred to wrath by