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

The defense justified the encomium. High, solid, and with many bold angles, it curved southwardly out of view.

“On the top there are four hundred towers, each a reservoir of water,” the Hebrew continued. “Look now! Over the wall, tall as it is, see in the distance two hills, which you may know as the rival crests of Sulpius. The structure on the farthest one is the citadel, garrisoned all the year round by a Roman legion. Opposite it this way rises the Temple of Jupiter, and under that the front of the legate’s residence⁠—a palace full of offices, and yet a fortress against which a mob would dash harmlessly as a south wind.”

At this point the sailors began taking in sail, whereupon the Hebrew exclaimed, heartily, “See! you who hate the sea, and you who have vows, get ready your curses and your prayers. The bridge yonder, over which the road to Seleucia is carried, marks the limit of navigation. What the ship unloads for further transit, the camel takes up there. Above the bridge begins the island upon which Calinicus built his new city, connecting it with five great viaducts so solid time has made no impression upon them, nor floods nor earthquakes. Of the main town, my friends, I have only to say you will be happier all your lives for having seen it.”

As he concluded, the ship turned and made slowly for her wharf under the wall, bringing even more fairly to view the life with which the river at that point was possessed. Finally, the lines were thrown, the oars shipped, and the voyage was done. Then Ben-Hur sought the respectable Hebrew.

“Let me trouble you a moment before saying farewell.”

The man bowed assent.

“Your story of the merchant has made me curious to see him. You called him Simonides?”

“Yes. He is a Jew with a Greek name.”

“Where is he to be found?”

The acquaintance gave a sharp look before he answered,

“I may save you mortification. He is not a moneylender.”

“Nor am I a money-borrower,” said Ben-Hur, smiling at the other’s shrewdness.

The man raised his head and considered an instant.

“One would think,” he then replied, “that the richest merchant in Antioch would have a house for business corresponding to his wealth; but if you would find him in the day, follow the river to yon bridge, under which he quarters in a building that looks like a buttress of the wall. Before the door there is an immense landing, always covered with cargoes come and to go. The fleet that lies moored there is his. You cannot fail to find him.”

“I give you thanks.”

“The peace of our fathers go with you.”

“And with you.”

With that they separated.

Two street-porters, loaded with his baggage, received Ben-Hur’s orders upon the wharf.

“To the citadel,” he said; a direction which implied an official military connection.

Two great streets, cutting each other at right angles, divided the city into quarters. A curious and immense structure, called the Nymphaeum, arose at the foot of the one running north and south. When the porters turned south there, the newcomer, though fresh from Rome, was amazed at the magnificence of the avenue. On the right and left there were palaces, and between them extended indefinitely double colonnades of marble, leaving separate ways for footmen, beasts, and chariots; the whole under shade, and cooled by fountains of incessant flow.

Ben-Hur was not in mood to enjoy the spectacle. The story of Simonides haunted him. Arrived at the Omphalus⁠—a monument of four arches wide as the streets, superbly illustrated, and erected to himself by Epiphanes, the eighth of the Seleucidae⁠—he suddenly changed his mind.

“I will not go to the citadel tonight,” he said to the porters. “Take me to the khan nearest the bridge on the road to Seleucia.”

The party faced about, and in good time he was deposited in a public house of primitive but ample construction, within stone’s-throw of the bridge under which old Simonides had his quarters. He lay upon the housetop through the night. In his inner mind lived the thought, “Now⁠—now I will hear of home⁠—and mother⁠—and the dear little Tirzah. If they are on earth, I will find them.”

Next day early, to the neglect of the city, Ben-Hur sought the house of Simonides. Through an embattled gateway he passed to a continuity of wharves; thence up the river midst a busy press, to the Seleucian Bridge, under which he paused to take in the scene.

There, directly under the bridge, was the merchant’s house, a mass of gray stone, unhewn, referable to no style, looking, as the voyager had described it, like a buttress of the wall against which it leaned. Two immense doors in front communicated with the wharf. Some holes near the top, heavily barred, served as windows. Weeds waved from the crevices, and in places black moss splotched the otherwise bald stones.

The doors were open. Through one of them business went in; through the other it came out; and there was hurry, hurry in all its movements.

On the wharf there were piles of goods in every kind of package, and groups of slaves, stripped to the waist, going about in the abandon of labor.

Below the bridge lay a fleet of galleys, some loading, others unloading. A yellow flag blew out from each masthead. From fleet and wharf, and from ship to ship, the bondmen of traffic passed in clamorous countercurrents.

Above the bridge, across the river, a wall rose from the water’s edge, over which towered the fanciful cornices and turrets of an imperial palace, covering every foot of the island spoken of in the Hebrew’s description. But, with all its suggestions, Ben-Hur scarcely noticed it. Now, at last, he thought to hear of his people⁠—this, certainly, if Simonides had indeed been his father’s slave. But would the man acknowledge the relation? That would be to give up his riches and the sovereignty of trade so royally witnessed on