LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO . 
 
 1
 
 BY THE ATUHOR OF 
 
 THE 
 
 CHRONICLES OF THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 
 
 THE EARLY DAWN. 
 
 DIARY OF KITTY TREVYLYAN. 
 
 WINIFRED BERTRAM. 
 
 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS. 
 
 ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA. 
 
 THE VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 WATCHWORDS FOR THE WARFARE OF LIFE. 
 MARY, THE HANDMAID OF THE LORD. 
 THE SONG WITHOUT WORDS. 
 POEMS.
 
 
 THE VICTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE VANQUISHED 
 
 A STORY OF THE 
 
 FIRST CENTURY. 
 
 EY THE AUTHOR OF THE 
 
 "Chronicles of the Sehonberg-Cotta Family." 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 DODD & MEAD, 762 BROADWAY, 
 
 1871.
 
 AUTHOR'S EDITION.
 
 " The Author of the ' Schonberg Cotta-Family 
 wishes it to be generally known among the read- 
 ers of her books in America, that the American 
 Editions issued by Messrs. DODD & MEAD, 
 of New York, alone have the Author 's sanction."
 
 THE 
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 T was the eve of the Triumph of 
 Germanicus. The Roman camp on 
 the hills above the Campagna was 
 hushed in sleep. A tall fair woman 
 one of the German captives who were to 
 grace the triumph had crept to the door of 
 one of the tents, and was gazing with eyes 
 dreamily fixed on the long reach of Roman 
 Road which stretched before her into the 
 darkness. 
 
 To her, as to us, that road was a great sym- 
 bol. It was no mere pliant highway of com- 
 merce, in gracious windings accommodating 
 itself to the needs of men and the difficulties 
 of nature. Rigid as the Roman rule, it scaled 
 the hills and spanned the valleys : the crooked 
 must be made straight before it, and the rough 
 
 I* (9)
 
 10 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 places plain. No kindly chain, gently binding 
 nation to nation with friendly links ; but a 
 weapon of war, straight as the spear of the 
 soldier, as the rod of the lictor, as the flight 
 of an arrow, it shot over mountain and chasm, 
 through forest and marsh not to link the na- 
 tions to each other, but to bind the ends of 
 the earth to Rome. To the Roman, a ray of 
 light from the great focus of the Empire ; to 
 the German captive, a transverse strand of 
 the great mystic web in which tribe after tribe 
 of her race had been entangled and crushed. 
 
 Far back into her inner life those arrowy 
 lines led her: mystic Runes bringing up shad- 
 owy forms from the icy hollows or fiery abys- 
 ses of the past bringing down royal shapes 
 from its sunny heights. Far back to a hut on 
 the edge of a Northern forest ; one of those 
 huge, impenetrable forests which gave mys- 
 tery and poetry to the prosaic levels of her 
 North German land ; the great Teutoberger 
 Forest between the rivers Lippe and Weser. 
 
 Murmurs of waters and of pines had min- 
 gled with her mother's cradle -songs. 'For 
 she, too, sitting there so solitary, so helpless, 
 had been welcomed into the world as if it 
 were to be a joyous home to her as if it were 
 the abiding-place, the city of the shining pal- 
 aces where dwelt the JEsir, the mighty gods. 
 She, too, had once been a jewel and a treas-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. n 
 
 ure, cherished and guarded as if she were 
 worth it : in that earliest home, and then in 
 another. 
 
 The last was too near to bear looking at 
 yet. Her thoughts went back to the first. 
 Brothers and sisters growing up in one home : 
 their training, the necessity of labor and the 
 example of brave and pure lives ; their play, 
 wild feats of daring, wrestling, climbing gi- 
 gantic forest-trees, scaling all but inaccessible 
 rocks, leaping streams or breasting them at 
 flood, the mimicry of the labor of the men 
 and women they were to follow of the hunts- 
 man, the boatman, and the smith. 
 
 The soldier's was no distinctive calling then. 
 All the men had to fight all free men ; and 
 free women too, if needed. The wolves and 
 the neighboring Sclaves had no respect for 
 sex or age ; and if the hand of maid and moth- 
 er could not grasp the spear as well as the 
 shepherd's staff and the reaper's hook, what 
 would become of the homes, and the harvests, 
 and the little ones, when the men were away 
 at the war or the chase, and the growl of the 
 hungry bear was heard across the snow, or 
 the form of some treacherous foe was seen 
 lurking behind the pine-stems ? The German 
 women had need to be strong, and brave, and 
 true well-nigh as strong and altogether as 
 brave as the men if the race was to fight its
 
 12 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 way through the centuries, and Europe was 
 to be. 
 
 As Siguna, the German captive, sate at the 
 tent door in the dusk, dreamily following the 
 white line of paved way whose sharp out- 
 line, denned against the dark borders of wood 
 or herbage, was the only thing yet cleaVly 
 visible until it was lost in the darkness, her 
 thoughts also lost themselves with it in a 
 deeper darkness, and became more and more 
 dim and sombre. Once, indeed, there had 
 been need that she should be strong, and 
 brave, and true : a free woman of noble birth ; 
 the wife of a brave free man, honored among 
 his tribe for his skill and strength in forging 
 weapons and wielding them, in wielding the 
 smith's hammer and the warrior's spear ; the 
 mother of boys and maidens who were to bear 
 on the good name and build up the house and 
 the tribe. 
 
 But now what use was there for strength, 
 or courage, or faith in her, a captive slave ? 
 Her husband, they said, had fallen in the bat- 
 tle which the General Cascina had won over 
 the hero. Herman in the Teutoberger Wald ; 
 her sons with him all save the youngest, who 
 now lay sleeping, a captive in the tent. She 
 herself, her young son Siward, and her little 
 daughter Hilda, had been betrayed by the 
 chief Segestes into the hands of the Romans
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. I3 
 
 at the same time with Thusnelda, bride of the 
 hero Herman, and the daughter of the traitor. 
 Her strength would only make her a more 
 useful slave to the conquerors ; her courage 
 availed nothing to defend herself or her chil- 
 dren ; and what were truth and honor to one 
 who henceforth was a chattel, with no rec- 
 ognized relationship, no rights, no hopes ? 
 Would it not be well for her to do what Va- 
 rus, the hapless Roman general, had so lately 
 done, when his entangled legions lay at the 
 mercy of the young hero Herman ? He fell, 
 despairing, on his own sword ; and fled thus, 
 not from one of his enemies, but from all for 
 ever. 
 
 " Fled !" yes, fled. Such an end she felt 
 would be flight, not rashly to be chosen by a 
 German freewoman. 
 
 Who could say whether, in that dim under- 
 world also, there might not be a second burial 
 for the souls of cowards who thus deserted 
 their post ; as cowards among her people 
 were suffocated and buried in mud ? 
 
 Moreover, as she gazed into the darkness, a 
 strong persuasion came over her not for the 
 first time, but each time gathering strength 
 that Olave, her husband, was not slain, that 
 he still survived, and that she was bound to 
 live for him and for his children. A strange 
 irresistible presentiment and persuasion, such
 
 14 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 as she had been wont to feel from her youth, 
 such as haunts an imaginative race like hers 
 a presentiment held sacred in those days 
 among her people, as a divine instinct or in- 
 spiration, which was one of the spiritual pre- 
 rogatives of brave and pure women. 
 
 This time it was quickened and reinforced 
 by a touch which awoke instincts at least as 
 sacred. 
 
 Her son Siward had crept to her side at 
 the tent door, noiselessly, and pressing her 
 hand against his cheek, he drew it around 
 him. A boy of sixteen, hardy and daring, as 
 boys of his race were wont to be ; had he been 
 at home and free, the men of his tribe would 
 ere this have gathered together and endued 
 him with the sword and buckler, wherewith 
 to prove and betoken his manhood. But for 
 nearly two years he had been a captive in the 
 Roman camp, the camp of Germanicus. His 
 mother had been in the household of Agrip- 
 pina, and he himself the play-fellow of the 
 child Caligula, darling of the veterans shod, 
 to please them, in his toy caligas, copies of 
 their rough military shoes. For Siward was 
 gentle, as the courageous are wont to be, and 
 children trusted him. And the Emperor Ca- 
 ligula was once a child ; what he was to be- 
 come, unknown to his play-fellows the vete- 
 rans, or to himself.
 
 VICTOET OF THE VANQUISHED. jj 
 
 " Mother," the boy whispered, pouring out 
 in a swift torrent the thoughts and purposes 
 that had been slowly gathering within him, 
 "you cannot sleep. Nor can I. You are 
 thinking of to-morrow ; of the Roman tri- 
 umph, and of our shame. But do not heed 
 the triumph. I heed it not. We were not 
 conquered by the Romans ; we neither fled, 
 nor were taken in fair fight, but betrayed by 
 our own people. Traitors alike, those who 
 bought and sold us. The shame is theirs, not 
 ours. And, mother, I have been thinking it 
 matters little whether they call me slave or 
 free. If I choose to serve, I serve freely. 
 And I do choose to serve ; for by serving the 
 Romans we may learn to conquer them, as 
 our Herman did. And of all Romans I choose 
 to serve Germanicus and Agrippina. For she 
 is brave and true, and he is brave and gener- 
 ous, save in the matter of buying us of the 
 traitor. Mother," he entreated, " do not heed 
 the triumph. I have heard some say, it is no 
 triumph to Germanicus. He had rather far 
 have been winning victories in Germany, than 
 dragging captives after him at Rome, leaving 
 our people to undo his victories. Think not 
 of the chains and jeers of these Romans. 
 Think of us, your children, who will never 
 dishonor our father nor thee. Think of us, 
 and walk, not as a captive, but as a crowned
 
 1 6 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 queen. For I have set my heart to be patient, 
 and to learn as Herman did, of these Romans, 
 until one day, if it may be, I may help to con- 
 quer freedom back, for us and for our race." 
 
 She looked proudly on his fair open brow, 
 and then answered in a low, murmuring 
 voice, 
 
 " You will never dishonor me, nor will I 
 ever desert you. But I was thinking not of 
 the morrow, nor of any morrows. The mor- 
 rows are for you, not for me ; unless, indeed, 
 the inward voice speak true, and he lives, 
 your father yet lives !" 
 
 Her voice trembled, and the boy did not 
 interrupt her by a question. 
 
 " Remember, my son, I have this voice with- 
 in me, dim and low, yet mightier than all men 
 can say to the contrary. Remember but 
 speak not of it unless I tell you. Live you as 
 if he were slain, and you alone bore his name. 
 I live as if he lived." 
 
 Then pointing to the reach of road, she 
 ccntinued, " I was not thinking of to-morrow, 
 but of yesterdays long past ; tracing back that 
 fatal road to its beginning far away in the 
 Teutoberger Forest, far away in the days that 
 are gone. Listen, my son, and remember. 
 For the day is beginning to dawn, and who 
 knows how often we may be alone together 
 thus, and free to speak ?..
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ij 
 
 " We lived at the edge of the Forest. In 
 my childhood we knew no foes but the bears 
 and wolves which haunted it, and some stray 
 bands of Sclaves, wandering from their lands 
 beyond the Elbe, the hordes which ever press 
 our people onward unless we stem their cease- 
 less torrents back, or capture them and make 
 them slaves." 
 
 " The Sclaves were our slaves. Now we 
 are to be slaves of the Romans," said the boy. 
 " I can understand now why our slaves hated 
 us, and were not to be trusted." 
 
 " Slaves these must be of necessity," Siguna 
 replied ; " for men are not of one blood, nor 
 one destiny, any more than trees. ' How could 
 the free do the noble work, unless there were 
 slaves to do the base ? The wrong is that we 
 Germans, who were born to be free, should 
 be ensnared and enslaved, instead of those 
 wild savage hordes who can speak no lan- 
 guage fit for freemen, and were born to serve. 
 My brothers and sisters," she continued, "had 
 left the father's house. They had married, and 
 had houses and slaves of their own. I was 
 left alone with my father and mother, he a 
 gray-haired man. We knew no foes save the 
 wild beasts and the wild men ; until one sum- 
 mer morning I heard my father's voice, grown 
 tremulous and feeble now, in tones more 
 tremulous than usual, as he came in from his
 
 1 8 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 work. ' Hilda, mother,' he said, ' and Siguna, 
 daughter : our days in the land of our fathers 
 are numbered. The Southern men are on 
 us, the men of Rome. My bones will be the 
 last laid among the dead of our race. You 
 will bury me, and then go hence to be free.' 
 We thought he must have seen an army, and 
 listened hour after hour to hear the tread of 
 armed men ; but when, later in the day, we 
 followed him to a brow of a neighboring hill, 
 we could see nothing along the marshes and 
 far undulations of the heath but an orderly 
 band of workmen, digging trenches, which 
 others were carefully filling up with stones. 
 
 " It seemed a harmless, peaceable employ- 
 ment ; but my father said, 
 
 " ' It is the end of the chain of the giants. 
 The other end is in the hands of the man who 
 rules all men, save a few of us Germans. 
 
 " ' Between us and the dwelling of the gods 
 is the Rainbow Bridge, whereon the gods and 
 heroes come to and fro. 
 
 " ' This is the bridge between us and the 
 dwelling of the destroyers. Thereon hence- 
 forth for ever those who hate us will pass to 
 and fro, until they drive us from our homes. 
 Where that straight way comes, the Roman 
 rules, and the Teuton must fly or become a 
 slave, moulded unto the likeness of the stran- 
 ger, speaking his Roman tongue, and wearing
 
 VICTOR Y OF THE VANQUISHED. I9 
 
 his garb.' But Olave the brave, your father, 
 my betrothed from childhood, son of the smith 
 (whose arm could wield the hammer like a 
 god, and the spear like a hero, although he 
 was but a boy), saw hope where the aged saw 
 only fear, and he said afterwards, secretly, to 
 me, 
 
 " ' A bridge for one is a bridge for another. 
 Whence the Southern came, thither the North- 
 ern men can go. At the other end of the 
 chain is the golden city, " glorious as Asgard, 
 the city of the gods." We will make that 
 road. as the Rainbow Bridge, and we will be 
 the heroes who shall tread it to storm the gol- 
 den city, and make it ours and yours.' 
 
 "And I, too, was young, believed the voice 
 of youth, and thought hope the true light that 
 shall endure, and fear mere twilight shadow, 
 born of the darkness which is nothing, and 
 vanishing into the nothingness whence it 
 came. 
 
 " So from day to day we watched the stran- 
 gers at their work. And we could not but 
 wonder at their skill. The ground was in 
 many parts soft and marshy, such as the 
 lightest-footed maiden could scarcely cross in 
 safety. But these strangers had determined 
 to make it solid and strong enough to bear 
 the weight of military wagons, laden baggage 
 mules, and the tread of heavily-armed legions.
 
 20 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 And they did it. First, they dug the two 
 trenches straight as an arrow, to mark out 
 the road ; then the deep ditch between. Mean- 
 time other laborers had been felling trees in 
 the forests ; piles were cut of the strongest 
 wood, and sunk deep in the marshy ground. 
 These were covered with a thick layer of 
 small stones and shingle some of it gathered 
 from the river-bed, others broken fragments 
 of the stones they were shaping and cutting 
 for the surface. For each man had his given 
 work. There was no debating or hesitating 
 among them. Layer on layer lay the stones, 
 and layer on layer \vorked the men. The 
 wood-cutter did not interfere with the stone- 
 cutter, nor the stone-cutter with the brick- 
 layer, any more than the piles with the stones, 
 or the stones with the layer of rubble-work 
 the crumbled stone cemented with lime which 
 lay above it or that with the layer of broken 
 pottery and brick-work above again. Young 
 as I then was, I remember how the sense of 
 Law and Order, and the silent, continuous 
 work, among them, contrasted with our di- 
 visions and debates, our eager talking over 
 work, and fitful intervals of work and lazy 
 revelling, fell on me with a crushing sense of 
 power. 
 
 " The very broken fragments of pottery, 
 which lay as unsightly encumbrances before
 
 VICTORY OF T1IE VANQUISHED. 2 l 
 
 our huts, were treasures in those magical 
 hands. 
 
 " And at last came the smooth stones from 
 the quarries they made in the hills, carefully 
 shaped and levelled, and laid on the surface, 
 rammed down and cemented and fitted, so 
 that the whole was one unbroken building, 
 smooth and solid, and strong enough, I 
 thought, for the walls of Asgard. And over 
 it passed the armed bands, man and horse, 
 the heavy wagons, and the laden mules. They 
 had made a way through the marsh as solid 
 as the everlasting rocks. What might they 
 not do ? Why not make a way through the 
 air or the sea ? 
 
 "Wood from our forests, shingle from our 
 rivers, potsherds from our rubbish heaps, rock 
 from our hills, they had gathered all into one 
 mighty weapon for our ruin. 
 
 " One evening after this, there was a gath- 
 ering of men from many tribes in our home, to 
 debate how best to encounter the invader- 
 Some reproached the rest that they had ever 
 suffered the road to be made ; others debated 
 how best to destroy it. Olave your father, 
 who was older now, and began to take his 
 place among the men, smiled ; and when the 
 elders had all spoken, he said quietly, as was 
 his wont, 
 
 ' ' Why hinder the bees from building ? If
 
 22 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 we are strong and vigilant enough, they are 
 but storing wax and honey for us. Is not 
 the hero Herman, the son of Sigimer, among 
 us? Has he not lived among the men of 
 Rome, and learned their wisdom, while his 
 heart remains true to his people ? If we are 
 united, and will obey him, will he not lead us 
 to victory ? Then shall their wondrous road 
 those long strands of their Roman web 
 lead them to be our prey, not us to be 
 theirs. 
 
 "But at the name of Herman the strife 
 arose loud. Some said he was ambitious, and 
 would make himself a king. Some, ' that he 
 was of another tribe, and no one could expect 
 a freeman of the Attuarii to submit to a man 
 of the Chertfeci, be he wise and brave as he 
 might. One tribe was as good as another, 
 and one freeman worth as much as another. 
 What right had any to rule where all were 
 free ?' And so, in strife and debate, the meet- 
 ing broke up. 
 
 " And Olave was grieved, and for once de- 
 sponding; and he said, as we took leave by 
 the Roman road, which now passed close be- 
 fore our door, 
 
 " ' Maybe your father spoke too truly. Age 
 foresees ; let youth prevent if possible. But 
 these Romans are the road, and we the shin- 
 gle. They are one, and we are many. They
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 $ 
 
 many gathered into one. We one crumbled 
 into many.' 
 
 " Perhaps I remember these words so well, 
 because he spoke them on the eve of our mar- 
 riage. 
 
 " Olave came to live in our home, and rear- 
 ed his forge beside the hut, and was as a son 
 to my parents. And grandchildren grew up 
 to minister to them, and to bear on their name, 
 and to make their fading lives glad with new 
 life, until we laid them underneath the soil of 
 the forest, among the sires of our tribe. 
 
 " But meantime the road was slowly doing 
 its work. Roman soldiers traversed it north- 
 ward into the land they knew not ; and soon 
 young Germans began to traverse it south- 
 ward into the land we knew not. An altar to 
 Augustus Caesar had been erected beyond the 
 Elbe ; and many of our people saw that this 
 unseen Augustus was indeed the strongest, 
 and deemed it fit that he should be called di- 
 vine, and that godlike honors should be paid 
 to him as to any of the gods of Asgard. For 
 our gods had not hindered the making of the 
 roads ; and they live far off in Asgard, and the 
 Rainbow Bridge between them and us could 
 be crossed at no man's will. But this road 
 could be trodden by all freemen whensoever 
 and whithersoever they would. And there
 
 24 VICTORY OF THE VANQUJ8HED. 
 
 were rumors of an earthly Asgard at the end ; 
 and of welcomes and revelries there more joy- 
 ous than the feasts of the heroes, and of drink 
 which made the heart of man more glad than 
 the milk of Heidrun the goat, or the beer of 
 the gods. 
 
 " Many of these youths passed us on their 
 southward ventures. 
 
 " ' Let us go to the golden south/ they said 
 to Olave as they went on their southward 
 way, whilst he sharpened their weapons. ' We 
 are strong, and these strangers are wise. Let 
 us learn their wisdom, and our strength shall 
 win their spoils. Go thou with us. Learn to 
 forge weapons like theirs. And then thy 
 strong right arm shall wield them as no South- 
 ern man can.' 
 
 " There was a time when your father was 
 tempted. For the magic road stretched into 
 the distance before us always, enticing the 
 imagination like the witchery of an evil Rune. 
 But he resisted and stayed, for our sakes ; for 
 me and the little ones. And gradually the 
 wish wore away. 
 
 " For few northern men came back, and 
 those seemed to us to have grown neither 
 wise nor strong. They looked little like the 
 heroes. They had lost the strength of the 
 north, and had not gained the wisdom of the 
 south ; and the tales they brought of the City
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 $ 
 
 Rome were more like rumors of the abyss, of 
 the dwellings of darkness, than of the golden 
 homes. 
 
 " At last the road finished its work for us. 
 Tiberius Caesar, the emperor, built ships and 
 launched them on the Northern Sea, and sail- 
 ed up the River Elbe, piercing far into our 
 land. And at the same time, by a wondrous 
 concert, such as it seemed to us only the gods 
 could bring to pass, another army came thun- 
 dering along the fatal road, through the val- 
 ley of the Lippe, past our doors; and at 
 the appointed place one through the seas 
 and rivers unknown to them, and the other 
 through marsh and forest, and both through 
 a hostile land the armies met. What they 
 did when they thus magically met was not 
 the point of moment. The meeting was the 
 marvel. Who but gods could thus foresee 
 and conquer the future, and live and order in 
 the months to come as if they were to-day ? 
 
 " It was reported that an aged chief of our 
 people paddled in his canoe across the Elbe 
 to touch the hand of Tiberius, and cried, 
 ' What madness to contend against these un- 
 seen divinities. I, by the grace of Caesar, this 
 day have seen a god !' 
 
 " And so the whole land was subdued, and 
 called a Province of the City Rome. Then 
 Varus, the plunderer, was sent to govern us. 
 
 2
 
 26 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 And along the road came not soldiers only, 
 but the tax-gatherer and the lictor. And we 
 learned what Roman rule meant. This Varus 
 had come from the East, where, they say, men 
 have had their manhood long crushed out of 
 them, and bear anything, like beasts of bur- 
 den ; and he thought to rob and ruin us as 
 easily. We whose men had not had the free 
 manhood crushed out of them, whose women 
 could at need be as brave as the men ! 
 
 " He thought to rule us with rods, as if we 
 had been slaves or beasts of burden. He 
 would compel our men to work at road and 
 wall. The labor we thought no shame. Our 
 bravest were smiths and builders workers in 
 iron and wood. Nor did we think it shame 
 to learn, where the men of Rome were wiser 
 than we. Men who will not learn are for ever 
 babes. Labor and learning are no degrada- 
 tion for the noblest ; Siward, my son, never 
 think they are. But to be driven to labor 
 like beasts ; this no freeman or freewoman 
 would bear. 
 
 " Moreover the tyrant was base. He op- 
 pressed us, not for his people or his City 
 Rome, but for himself to fill his coffers with 
 treasure, the produce of our blood and toil. 
 Tyranny, whose end was greed, how could 
 that stand ? 
 
 "So there was storm and tumult every-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 / 
 
 where fires at night, feuds by day ; but no 
 great deliverance wrought, until Herman the 
 hero rose, and ensnared the ensnarer, and the 
 three legions perished in the Teutoberger 
 Forest. And Varus, the covetous oppressor, 
 could not brave his fate, but fled from it, fall- 
 ing on his own sword. 
 
 " Among the pines of the Teutoberger For- 
 est they fell, and to this day the turf is green 
 around their bones; nor, for all their boast- 
 ing, are- their eagles all won back. 
 
 " Then our people feared altars in the for- 
 est. There were sacrifices to the powers of 
 darkness, for such there are ; and it is hard to 
 know which are the stronger, the powers of 
 evil or of good. Wherefore the evil powers 
 must be appeased. 
 
 " Your father was there, and he told me the 
 men of Rome, the victims, for the most part 
 met their fate bravely as could the bravest 
 among us, so that his heart was grieved for 
 them. It is not wrong, I think, for women or 
 for men to pity. But pity must never weaken 
 the arm in striking for our people. For the 
 races of men are diverse, and their fathers, and 
 their gods ; and each must be true to his own. 
 
 " That was a glorious time for our people. 
 For once we were united. The oppressor 
 was slain ; the invaders fled ; the forts were 
 deserted.
 
 28 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " And once more the great road stretched 
 before us, through the valley of the winding 
 Lippe, among the meadows and the forests,, 
 untrodden by Roman feet; a bridge, your 
 father said, whereon the Germans should yet 
 cross and storm the golden city, and win the 
 wisdom which holds the key of all the treas- 
 ures. 
 
 " But they came back too surely the in- 
 vaders came back. They say these Romans 
 have two sacred places, with their guardian 
 gods. The first is the hearth with the hearth- 
 gods, which every man must defend with life. 
 This we Germans understand. To us also the 
 hearth is sacred. Perchance more than to the 
 men of Rome. 
 
 " But the Romans have another sacred 
 place, and a god they call Boundary, the end 
 as the other is the beginning, the goal as the 
 other is the starting-point, of the ways of men ; 
 a god who advances but never retreats. 
 
 " To them the utmost limit of their empire 
 is sacred as the inmost sanctuary of their 
 home. And where once this god Boundary 
 sets up his stone, thither at last must the tide 
 of Rome reach, and thence must it never roll 
 back. Or if beaten back again and again, 
 there must the tide at the end rise and re- 
 main. 
 
 " In vain, therefore, had we driven these
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 29 
 
 Romans back, and given the bones of their 
 vanquished legions to blanch on the green sod 
 of our forests. Their god Boundary must be 
 avenged, and his sacred place maintained ; 
 and back swept the overwhelming tide from 
 far-off inexhaustible sources, unknown to us. 
 Once more they come up the Lippe valley, 
 and the fatal road thundered with the roll of 
 wagons and the tread of the legions. 
 
 " And there were battles and betrayals. 
 
 " This Caesar they call Germanicus came 
 against us again. Once more the Roman ar- 
 mies were thrust through our confederate 
 tribes. The solid wedge among the crum- 
 bling confederacies. The road against the 
 shingle. The strong among us were driven 
 back or crushed. The weak were split into 
 countless fragments. Once more their armies 
 passed along the road of the Lippe valley into 
 the Teutoberger Forest. They saw the bones 
 of the slaughtered legions of Varus, and la- 
 mented over them, and raised over them the 
 funeral mound. And there, in the Teutober- 
 ger Forest, our best and bravest fell at the 
 end of the fatal road. Your father and your 
 brothers fell within sight of our home ; and 
 ere they fell we whom they died to defend 
 had been betrayed to the foe by our own 
 people. 
 
 " They bring no captives taken by the
 
 30 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 sword to grace this triumph. Nothing but a 
 few women and children basely sold. Did 
 I not see the legions return from the for- 
 est? 
 
 " We were in captivity in the Roman camp 
 by the Rhine. 
 
 " The whole camp had been thrown into 
 confusion by rumors of the rout of the le- 
 gions. Another slaughter of Varus, they said, 
 another army swallowed up in the depths of 
 the Teutoberger Forest. 
 
 " They did not feel secure behind their de- 
 fences, though the Rhine lay between them 
 and our people. They clamored to break 
 down the bridge, lest the conquering Ger- 
 mans should rush into the camp after the fly- 
 ing legions. 
 
 " The heart of many a German captive beat 
 high with hope that day. By evening whom 
 might we not be welcoming ? 
 
 " But no welcomes were in store for us. 
 
 " Agrippina, the brave matron, went to the 
 further end of the bridge the end nearest 
 the dreaded foe and thence none could in- 
 duce her to move. She stood there with her 
 boy Caligula, the darling of the camp, and 
 forbade them to touch the bridge until the 
 fugitives, if such there were to be, were safe 
 over it. 
 
 " And soon, instead of a rout of fugitives,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 31 
 
 appeared the heads of the legions marching 
 in order. They marched before her, four un- 
 broken legions ; learning, doubtless, as they 
 passed what they owed to her. And as they 
 passed she spoke brave words of welcome to 
 them, and of cheer to the wounded. And 
 with her own hands she ministered to their 
 wants. A noble, helpful woman. I think it 
 no shame to serve her. 
 
 " Yet scarcely did that army come back like 
 conquerors. No songs of triumph, such as 
 our Germans sung when they have over- 
 come ; and no spoils, nor any prisoners. 
 
 " Neither did it seem to us glorious when, 
 a few weeks afterwards, Germanicus himself 
 came back with his horsemen for the most 
 part on foot, and the footmen lightened of 
 much of their armor, and poorly clad, and 
 their numbers sorely thinned. 
 
 " It was said that these legions had suffered 
 for their heroic faithfulness to the law and 
 order which makes their strength ; that being 
 commanded to march within sight of the 
 Northern Sea, they had obeyed too loyally, 
 and had been swept away in the rapid rising 
 of its tides. 
 
 " But when another weary year had passed 
 away over us still captive in the camp, and 
 once more Germanicus came back to winter 
 quarters, and there was talk again of a great
 
 32 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. , 
 
 Roman victory, the victors brought little 
 token of their conquests. 
 
 " Slowly his shattered fleet came up the 
 broad waters of our Rhine to that Colonia 
 they have called Agrippina, after his brave 
 wife ; their oars often lost, soldiers' cloaks 
 hoisted instead of the torn sails, and the men 
 full of tales of dreadful fierce sea-monsters, 
 ' and of wrecks among wild men. Yet again 
 no spoils, and no prisoners, and no sign of the 
 god Boundary having set up his pillars deep- 
 er in our forests. 
 
 " The only spoils, the only prisoners still 
 are we, betrayed women and children. Yet 
 to-morrow they will drag us before the con- 
 queror's car, and will shout that the Germans 
 are vanquished. 
 
 " What matters it, my son ? Words do not 
 alter things that are, though they may hide 
 them for a time. If the spring has come, let 
 the ice glitter as it may, it will break under 
 their boastful tread. The betrayed Thusnel- 
 da, the noble young wife of our Herman, need 
 not break her heart, although she bear his cap- 
 tive babe in her arms at this Roman triumph. 
 
 " Her heart need not break ; save for the 
 treachery of her father. For Herman lives ; 
 and who knows who beside ? 
 
 " Our long, weary journey along the fatal 
 road is all but done.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 33 
 
 " At the other end in the Teutoberger For- 
 est lie the bones of the legions of Varus, and, 
 alas ! of many of our noblest Germans, before 
 whom Varus fell. The winds are sighing 
 among the pines above them, as I speak, and 
 the grass is slowly growing over them. 
 
 " The solid building has broken up the 
 shingle. 
 
 " We are coming at last to where the fatal 
 road begins. It has drawn us on at last into 
 the magic web it binds together. My father's 
 fears have proved true. It has done its evil 
 work for us. To-morrow we shall tread its 
 first steps, helpless captives, creeping slowly 
 up the hills of Rome !" 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 The two mother and son sate together at 
 the tent door on the hills, in imaginative sim- 
 plicity, one almost as much a child as the 
 other. 
 
 Behind them their own forests : the scat- 
 tered forest-huts, the keen individual life of 
 personal adventure and self-defence the life 
 of the family or the clan, with its ideal of free- 
 dom and of loyalty. Behind them the free 
 forest-life, with its precarious relations with 
 men, and its close relationships with the beasts 
 of the field: the bear and the wolf endued for 
 them with a kind of demoniac personality ; the 
 fox and the squirrel and the birds with a quaint
 
 34 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 humorous mischief; the sheep and even the 
 swine regarded as part of the family ; the dog 
 for the first time understood, his wistful speech- 
 lessness interpreted, his kindly ways and his 
 loyal devotion appreciated, and, like so many 
 other good things, created by being compre- 
 hended. 
 
 Behind them their own wild forests, with 
 their clearings and their wildernesses, their 
 little rounded green worlds of home, embo- 
 somed in impenetrable mysteries of space 
 multiplied visibly by the countless pillars of 
 the pines. 
 
 Before them Rome, the wonder-working 
 name which was a spell throughout the earth. 
 
 They had indeed passed many a fair city 
 on their southward way from Colonia and 
 Treves. 
 
 But these were mere gatherings of ordinary 
 men. 
 
 Rome was the inexhaustible source of ar- 
 mies, the goal of all roads and their starting- 
 point, the city of kings, the empress of cities, 
 the throne of the empire. 
 
 As the dusk slowly dissolved before the 
 day, and the road ceased to be the one dis- 
 tinctly defined object before them, and the 
 evergreen oaks and bays near at hand rose 
 from their masses of shade into individual 
 existence, and the forms of distant rocks
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 35 
 
 and woods became defined against the sky, 
 and through the openings of the hills came 
 glimpses of the rolling surges of the green 
 Campagna, and the tremulous shining of the 
 far-off sea, the two watchers strained their 
 eyes in the vain expectation of catching the 
 glitter of golden roofs, or the shimmer of 
 walls which must surely have something in 
 them of a magical beauty and an imperial 
 statelinecs different from all things else in the 
 world. 
 
 They sate gazing the mother and son 
 into the glory of the southern dawn. But no 
 earthly walls met their gaze only the splen- 
 dor of crimson and purple clouds and the 
 deep golden spaces between. 
 
 As they were watching the beautiful day 
 unfold like a flower, the silence was broken 
 by a low wail from a large building just be- 
 coming visible through the shadows of the 
 valley below. A low, helpless wail, breaking 
 every now and then into a shriek of agony. 
 
 " It is from the slave prison belonging to 
 the beautiful house among the trees," said 
 Siguna, with a shudder ; " some one is being 
 scourged or tortured there. Some one per- 
 haps of race higher than the master for whom 
 he toils." 
 
 The large building was indeed one of the 
 terrible slave-factories, from which the field-
 
 36 VICTORY OF TEE VANQUISHED. 
 
 work of the great Roman estates was done 
 scenes often of unutterable degradation and 
 suffering, being also prisons and places of 
 punishment for refractory slaves sent thither 
 from the city households. 
 
 The beautiful morning was still calmly un- 
 folding in the sky, and point after point of the 
 hills was kindling with her light, tree after 
 tree waking up its happy birds to welcome 
 her, and all the sweet flowers that had been 
 long ready with their cups of dew waiting for 
 her sisterly kiss and greeting her with the 
 fragrance which is their music. 
 
 But through all pierced those cries of hu- 
 man pain. It was long before the shrieks 
 died away again into the low, helpless wail 
 with which they had begun. And till they 
 had ceased neither mother nor son spoke. 
 
 Then the boy said, 
 
 " Is there not a city of the gods above ? I 
 used to think we caught glimpses of it at 
 dawn and sunset. And that when the com- 
 mon working daylight hid it from us it was 
 still there, golden and glorious as ever for the 
 gods, shaded by the Tree of Life, with the 
 pure fountains where they feast and take 
 counsel. Is it true ? Is there a city of the 
 gods?" 
 
 " So it was said by them of old time," she 
 replied.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 37 
 
 " Is Asgard then for the yEsir, as Rome is 
 for the Romans ? And do the gods heed the 
 miseries of all men as little as the Romans 
 the miseries of the Germans ?" 
 
 " It would almost seem so,'! she said. 
 
 " Yet," he said, " it is something that there 
 is one happy place in the world, where all are 
 good and just. In Asgard there are no cries 
 of agony. No wrong and cruelty to mar the 
 feasting there ?" 
 
 " I know not, my son," she replied, mourn- 
 fully. " Who knows ? Even there, it is said, 
 malice, and pain, and evil chance are strong. 
 It is said that the fairest hall in Asgard was 
 darkened by the shadow of death, when the 
 best and the brightest of all the gods fell on 
 his own hearth, slain by cunning and evil 
 chance, by an instrument so insignificant none 
 had deemed it worth while to guard against 
 it by the- little mistletoe, sent by the hand 
 of the darkest of all, the malicious one, who 
 was once a god. It is said the fairest home 
 in Asgard itself stands empty and desolate." 
 
 " But hereafter, one day, when all things 
 have been swept away and made new again," 
 he said, " after the storm-age, and the wolf- 
 age, and the years of frost, then will not the 
 just reign, and death and malice be gone ?" 
 
 " I know not, my son," she said ; " how can 
 I know ? Some say that the gods and the evil
 
 38 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 giants will slay each other in that day, and 
 that if victory is with the gods, it will be for 
 new gods and new men, not for those we 
 know. And Death, they say, can never be 
 slain. But who knows ? Who can say which 
 is the strongest ? right or wrong ? the good 
 or the evil ? light or darkness ? death or 
 life ? in earth, or in the under-world, or 
 above ?" 
 
 " On earth, there seems little doubt. Wrong 
 seems strongest here," said the boy " wrong 
 and death. The cunning seem stronger than 
 the wise, and the wily than the brave. Else 
 why should Herman the hero be wandering 
 defeated in the forests, and his young wife be 
 mourning betrayed and helpless here ? Js 
 there no place where wrong and death cannot 
 come ? no time when justice and truth will 
 rule ? Nowhere a happy city of the good ? 
 never a victory for the light ? Does no one 
 know ? Do none of these Romans know ?" 
 
 " They seem not to know anything that 
 makes them pure and just," she replied. 
 
 " Mother," he murmured, " do the dead 
 know ?" 
 
 " They must know, I think they who have 
 passed out of the strife and the illusions." 
 
 " Then surely," he said, " it is not worth 
 living, and it were better to die, and know." 
 
 " To die to know what, my son ?" she said,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 39 
 
 with a quiet hopelessness sadder than the bit- 
 terest cry of pain. 
 
 " Mother," he said, gently, " I spoke as a 
 coward. For thee and Hilda it is worth while 
 to live ; for you and for hope." 
 
 So they sate, the mother and son, as long 
 afterwards Monica and Augustine, gazing 
 into the depths of the sky. 
 
 But to them it held no City of God, stretch- 
 ing up the heights of heaven, with gates on 
 earth open to man ; only a far-off city of the 
 gods, inaccessible to man, but not to sin or 
 death or a dim Valhalla, with shadowy repe- 
 titions of the wars and feastings of earth, the 
 self-sacrifice which ennobles wars of earth, the 
 home affections which consecrate its feasts, 
 left out ; no Fountain of Life ; no Just One, 
 human to understand and judge, mighty to 
 deliver, divine to forgive. 
 
 The universe for them rested on no eternal 
 pillars of justice, but was tossed on the abyss 
 of frost and fire from which it sprang. 
 
 Yet in their inmost hearts rose a temple in 
 ruins, yet never entirely leveled save by wil- 
 ful hands from within. Unquenchable love, 
 yearning for justice and truth, and undying 
 hope, were there, reflecting a light they could 
 not see. 
 
 Thus the hour of waiting passed. The 
 dawn came up and was gone. From an un-
 
 40 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 fathomable sea of glory the sky became the 
 lighted roof of the dwelling-place of man. 
 And the camp awoke with buzz of eager 
 voices, and the stir of thousands, and the 
 din of arms, to the day of the great triumph. 
 
 And all the while, as the weary feet of the 
 captives had been treading, step by step, 
 league after league of the Roman road, the 
 feet of the Holy and the Just were treading 
 the terraces and thymy slopes of the valley 
 of Nazareth. 
 
 From those heavens into which they had 
 been gazing so hopelessly, not twenty } T ears 
 before, a great multitude of the heavenly host 
 had burst on the sight and hearing of men 
 with songs of peace and victory. 
 
 Deep in the stony heart of that magnificent 
 and corrupt empire, against which the tribes 
 of the north were breaking their strength, 
 was springing up the little germ of immortal 
 life which was to shiver the empire to its 
 foundations, and be the true Tree of Life to 
 the young nations of the north. 
 
 The whole world was tremulously astir in 
 dim expectation of the dawn. The whole earth 
 was waiting on the eve of the Great Triumph. 
 
 And the Conqueror was already there. The 
 Light of the world had come into the world. 
 
 But the world knew Him not.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HE long march from the North was 
 over. Rewards and honors had 
 been assigned to the soldiers who 
 had distinguished themselves ; the 
 accustomed largesses to all the troops. 
 
 The Roman Senate, still following the forms 
 of the Republic, had met and welcomed the 
 army ; the conqueror had mounted his chariot, 
 and the splendid spectacle of the Triumph of 
 Germanicus began. 
 
 There was nothing to mar the outward 
 splendor and glory of the sight. No blots 
 of shapeless, colorless dress, or of poor gaudy 
 color among the spectators ; no awkward 
 struggling with the perplexities of unwonted 
 costume among the actors in the procession ; 
 no sense of incongruity or anachronism in any 
 one. 
 
 Outwardly not a discord. Priests and mag- 
 istrates stepping with an easy dignity in their 
 accustomed robes, the flowing folds of the 
 
 (40
 
 4 2 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 white togas made white as any fuller on earth 
 could white them, contrasting with the rich 
 purple of the borders, or the saffron robes of 
 the augurs, all the colors harmonizing as in- 
 evitably as a bed of crocuses. 
 
 Then came the bands of trumpeters, with 
 the battle-music which more than any other 
 peals clear to us across the ages, with the un- 
 varying intervals of the heart-stirring calls 
 which have to be heard above the din of arms 
 and the cries of conflict, or through the folds 
 of sleep. 
 
 Next, the spoils of war, with symbols and 
 pictures of the conquered places, borne aloft. 
 
 In this case there were few spoils to ex- 
 hibit. Gold and silver vessels, embroidered 
 raiment, statue and picture, were not to be 
 found among these poor barbarians ; and 
 models of cities could not be constructed 
 where the cities were at best collections of 
 mud huts. This part of the procession, there- 
 fore, consisted of pictures of the mountains 
 and rivers, which were all the Germans had 
 to lose, and of battles, which, if the truth had 
 been told, they had not altogether lost. These, 
 carried aloft on horizontal trays, with large 
 panels on which were blazoned the names of 
 the tribes said to be conquered Chatti, Cher- 
 usci, Angrivarii were all the results that 
 could be shown. For, neither were the beasts
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 43 
 
 of the German forests glorious for triumphal 
 processions. No ponderous elephants to be 
 laden with barbaric trappings, no grand tawny, 
 tropical wild beasts. Bears there might have 
 been, and wolves, if the wolf foster-mother 
 were not too sacred a memory to be dragged 
 in derision by the people of Romulus. 
 
 After the spoils came the peace-music ; the 
 band of flute-players with their festive sug- 
 gestions of dance and song. 
 
 Next, the priests with the sacred white ox- 
 en, their gilded horns garlanded for sacrifice. 
 
 Then the only tangible spoils of the Ger- 
 man war, the captive Germans themselves, a 
 goodly procession, chained, and drawn out in 
 long files, that the eyes of the Roman people 
 might feast on these signs of the humiliation 
 of their foes, a humiliation sweetened by the 
 recollection of recent terrors, by its being an 
 avenging of the legions of Varus, vanquished 
 and slaughtered by the fathers of these cap- 
 tives among the rivers and mountains pic- 
 tured in the front of the procession. 
 
 First came a fair young mother with a babe 
 in her arms, Thusnelda, paraded alone in the 
 front, that no eye might miss her ; yet " neith- 
 er subdued to tears, nor using the language 
 of supplication ;" the wife of Herman, so 
 lately conqueror of Varus. 
 
 The band of captives was large and noble.
 
 44 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 It was perhaps possible for the spectators to 
 forget that neither Herman nor any of the 
 warriors who had fought by his side were 
 among them, but only these women and chil- 
 dren, not captured in fair field, but betrayed 
 by a base kinsman. 
 
 Then, preceded by the lictors with laurel- 
 wreathed fasces, in single file, came the cha- 
 riot of the Conqueror, himself a kingly-look- 
 ing man, of the old Roman type, the object 
 of a genuine popular enthusiasm, unpurchased, 
 and indeed most jealousy discouraged by the 
 emperor ; the idol of the Roman people, and 
 worthy .of the love of a nobler people than 
 they had sunk to be. 
 
 Twenty miles out, on his return, out they 
 had poured along the Flaminian Way, in the 
 heat of a Roman May, to welcome him back. 
 
 Pure and sacred memories of good women, 
 worthy of the Roman ideal days, made a halo 
 round him, the grandson of the faithful and 
 heroic Octavia. His mother, the pure and 
 beautiful Antonia, still lived. His own wife, 
 Agrippina, had shown herself capable of cour- 
 ageous devotion as high as that of any pa- 
 triotic matron of the republic, or of the heroes 
 who kept the bridge " in the brave days of 
 old." 
 
 In those corrupt days the home and the 
 life of Germanicus were such as to kindle a
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 45 
 
 glow of affectionate admiration in a corrupt 
 and hardened people. 
 
 His five young sons stood in the chariot 
 beside him. 
 
 Happily no eye in the admiring crowd 
 could see that one of these was to be the 
 Emperor Caligula, or that the daughter not 
 there was to be the mother of Nero. 
 
 He himself, if not the skillful general they 
 believed him, was a brave soldier, and a com- 
 mander who inspired his troops with an en- 
 thusiasm for his person such as only men of 
 genuine power of some kind can awaken. 
 Ardent and impulsive, as more than one inci- 
 dent in his life proves him, the fervor of his 
 character never led him beyond the sacred 
 bounds of duty, such as he understood it, 
 chiefly, in all probability, because his ambi- 
 tion was not selfish. 
 
 Twice, it is said, he was almost on the 
 point of rushing, by his own act, out of life. 
 Once, some years before, when he had quelled 
 the perilous mutiny which arose, on the death 
 of Augustus, in the army of the Rhine, and the 
 soldiers cried, " Cassar Germanicus will not 
 endure to be a subject," and would have car- 
 ried him to Rome and proclaimed him Em- 
 peror in place of his adoptive father the new 
 Emperor Tiberius. To him the intended honor 
 was the threat of an impious disgrace. He
 
 46 VICTORY Of THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 had risked his life to restore the legions to 
 their duty to Rome. Better die himself than 
 be seduced or driven from his duty to Caesar ! 
 
 And once again, a few months since, when 
 many of his faithful veterans had been wrecked 
 on the North German coast ; so keen was his 
 grief at their loss that he would gladly have 
 perished in the sea beside them. His soldiers' 
 lives were dear to him as his own life. 
 
 Eloquent words burned naturally on lips 
 enkindled by such a heart. He was held to 
 be a poet and orator of no mean stamp. 
 
 As he stood in the prime of his strength, 
 among his boys, in the triumphal chariot, 
 robed in the embroidered toga, sceptred and 
 laurel-crowned, all Rome did well to throng 
 every inch of the pavements and every step 
 of the temples along the Sacred Way in his 
 honor, and to send up clouds of incense from 
 every altar. 
 
 He stood before them, a pathetic witness 
 amidst all their degradation, of what their 
 inmost hearts held good, of what each Roman 
 was meant to be. 
 
 Behind the triumphal chariot marched the 
 soldiers, shouting, " lo Triumphe," singing 
 and jesting. 
 
 So the stately show swept along the Sacred 
 Way past the Forum,with its army of statues ; 
 and up the Capitoline ; past the temples, with
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 47 
 
 the broad flights of steps crowded with gazers, 
 the May sunshine lighting up the dazzling 
 white robes, glowing on the purple and saffron, 
 flashing back from brazen spear and shield. 
 Slowly it swept up the old sacred hill through 
 air sweet with the fragrance of countless fresh 
 garlands and with incense from a thousand 
 shrines, vibrating with music martial and fes- 
 tive, and with the triumphs and the welcomes 
 of all the people of Rome. 
 
 Slowly it swept on, until at a point on the 
 ascent it suddenly paused. The German cap- 
 tives had reached the state -prison on the 
 Capitol. 
 
 Then from the fettered band, according to 
 ancient Roman custom, were withdrawn some 
 of the noblest among them, never to reappear. 
 Young and in the prime of strength, with no 
 crime but that of being enemies of Rome, 
 they were led from the midst of the captives, 
 from the festive throng and the May sunshine, 
 within the door of the prison by the wayside. 
 And there, in the darkness of the Mamertine 
 dungeons, the exiles were cast down to die 
 unpitied, while all Rome was keeping holiday 
 outside. 
 
 Very slowly the moments of that terrible 
 pause passed for three of the captives. A 
 deeper pallor spread over the face of the 
 mother Siguna as she drew the child Hilda
 
 48 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 closer to her. Siward's brow flushed, and he 
 looked round to see if there were one token 
 of pity in the festive throng. There was a 
 slight silence, a little more eager pressing for- 
 ward of the crowd to see ; and that was all. 
 
 The boy heard no sound of compassion, and 
 caught no glance of pity in man or woman. 
 
 Only from one little deformed girl, who hap- 
 pened to be pushed near him in the throng. 
 He heard her ask an old man who was taking 
 care of her what they were doing with these 
 fair boys. 
 
 " They are going to kill them, and throw 
 them into the dungeons," he said. 
 
 " But it is a festival," she said ; " could they 
 not wait?" 
 
 " It is part of the festivity," he replied. 
 " The Roman people enjoy strong contrasts. 
 They have a different idea of the drama from 
 that which we Greeks had. They like their 
 tragedy real." 
 
 The little maiden looked perplexed. There 
 was a quiet bitterness in the tone of the slave 
 which made Siward glance up in his face for 
 an explanation. The face was not bitter. 
 There was a sarcastic curve about the lips, 
 but the dark eyes met the boy's with a kind- 
 liness so different from the expression of the 
 other faces around him, that it made him re- 
 member the countenance.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 49 
 
 The impression was deepened by what fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 At that moment there was a rush amongst 
 the crowd to catch a glimpse of the con- 
 demned captives. In the pressure, the little 
 deformed girl was separated from the old man 
 and thrown down amidst the band of captives. 
 She might have been trodden on and hurt, 
 but that Siward, with an irresistible instinct 
 of protection, gently lifted her up, and, fet- 
 tered as he was, bore her to a safe place on 
 some steps by the wayside. There the old 
 man quickly found and rejoined her, and 
 was beginning to thank him, when, with 
 rude words and blows, the boy was driven 
 back into the procession which he had disar- 
 ranged. 
 
 The whole was the work of a moment, but 
 for Siward it was a moment of balm. 
 
 For that moment the bewildering pomp and 
 the bewildering sense of wrong were lifted 
 from his heart, and it was brought close to 
 other human hearts. 
 
 In Rome then, too, amidst that triumphant, 
 insulting crowd, were infirmity, and suffering, 
 and pity ! 
 
 The large soft eyes that had thanked him 
 
 from the wan, suffering little face, and the 
 
 words and tones of the old Greek slave, 
 
 haunted him, and seemed half to awaken him 
 
 3
 
 50 VICTORY OF- THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 from a terrible dream. All the more because 
 he but half understood them. 
 
 He had great need of some such drops of 
 healing, for the day was bitterer than he had 
 thought. 
 
 It was not so easy to despise the contempt 
 and derision of a whole people to be driven 
 or dragged chained and enslaved, a gazing- 
 stock for thousands of hostile eyes he, and 
 his mother, and the helpless little sister. Often 
 he wished he had not learned the Latin tongue 
 so well during that long captivity in the camp 
 by the Rhine. It might have been easier not 
 to understand the words of satisfied revenge 
 or scornful raillery, or, worse still, of scornful 
 praise, flung at them as at well-made dogs or 
 horses. He hoped his mother did not hear. 
 When he looked at her, her face seemed 
 calm. 
 
 It was bitterer than he had thought. To 
 have fought for his people and been fairly 
 captured could have been borne ; but not 
 easily thus to be entrapped like vermin, and 
 then exhibited as a fair fruit of conquest, and 
 not to be able to say to the exulting crowd, 
 " We were betrayed, we were not conquered. 
 If you had tried it fairly with us in battle, we 
 or you should have been left on the field. We 
 would never have been here." 
 
 And worse than all was this terrible pause,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 51 
 
 the wrenching- of their brethren from them 
 without possibility of farewell or lamentation. 
 
 With a fierce joy the boy's thoughts went 
 back to the forest of the Teutoberg, to the 
 Roman victims slain there in honor of the 
 German gods- 1 to the blanched bones of the 
 legions left so long unburied and unavenged. 
 
 Slowly, drop by drop, the bitter venom dis- 
 tilled into his heart. 
 
 And in all heaven and earth there was noth- 
 ing to counteract or ward off the poison- save 
 the patient sustaining face of the mother at 
 his side, and the little touch of human sym- 
 pathy which came to him through the eyes 
 of the deformed girl and in the tones of the 
 old slave. 
 
 For it was not in the Roman Forum that 
 men had erected an altar to Pity. 
 
 In all the temples by which they passed 
 there was no sanctuary of sorrow, no image 
 of a Divine Sufferer overcoming by enduring. 
 
 In all the sunn)'- heavens through which he 
 gazed he knew of no judgment-seat where 
 there was certainty of justice for all, far less 
 of a mercy-seat, where there was certainty 
 of infinite pity for all. 
 
 At length the dreadful pause in the march 
 was over ; the sign was given that the execu- 
 tions had been accomplished, and the massa- 
 cred captives were lying dead in the dark-
 
 52 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 ness below ; and the splendid show swept on 
 again in the May sunshine, with the battle 
 trumpets and festive flutings, through flow- 
 ers and incense, to the Temple of the Capito- 
 line Jove, where, beside the king of the gods, 
 the old god Boundary had kept his ancient 
 shrine. 
 
 Then came the sacrificing of oxen, and the 
 laying the wreath of victory on the lap of the 
 statue of Jove. 
 
 So Siguna and her children trod the last 
 steps of the fatal road, and finished the weary 
 march from the latest pillar of the god Bound- 
 ary among the forests of their native northern 
 land, to his earliest shrine on the rock of the 
 Capitol. 
 
 The sacred services being ended in the tem- 
 ple, the feastings began, the procession broke 
 up into numberless little knots of revellers, 
 each portion of it coalescing with some por- 
 tion of the crowd, eager to entertain the tri- 
 umphant army, to listen to stories of hair- 
 breadth 'scapes among the unknown northern 
 seas, whose waves had risen against their le- 
 gions, like some of the hideous monsters they 
 contained, and swallowed up half an army.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 N the evening of the Triumph the 
 boy Siward, having escaped for a 
 time from the revelries of the other 
 slaves of Germanicus, stood leaning 
 against a pillar of the palace portico. 
 
 It had been an embittering day for him. 
 The revelries among the slaves had been 
 worse than the ignominy of the procession ; 
 for they had given him a glimpse into the 
 unutterable debasement of the slave-house- 
 hold of which that day the German captives 
 had been the scoff and jest. 
 
 If slavery did not debase the slave as well 
 as the slave-owner, it must soon put an end 
 to itself. The slave, purified by suffering, 
 must rise above the master, degraded by in- 
 flicting it. But the crudest thing in cruelty 
 is its tendency to make the sufferer cruel. 
 And in this Roman slavery there were depths 
 both of cruelty and degradation scarcely to 
 be reached under any form of Christianity. 
 
 (53)
 
 54 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 In addition to his bitter sense of wrong, the 
 poor boy had also the pain of sorely bruised 
 limbs, not made easier to bear by the sense 
 that he had brought this pain on himself. 
 
 In his simplicity, when questioned as to his 
 parentage, he had said with some pride that 
 his father was of noble blood, and worked at 
 a smith's forge of his own ; the forge being in 
 his mind as much a subject to glory in as the 
 noble birth. 
 
 The torrent of derisive witticisms which 
 this confession had brought on the " patrician 
 blacksmith " and on his mother had altogether 
 overwhelmed the poor boy's resolutions to 
 practice silent endurance as the only dignity 
 of the slave. In a moment of uncontrollable 
 irritation, he had. made up for his want of 
 Latin wit by dealing a very effective barba- 
 rian blow against the most unendurable of his 
 tormentors, which had brought on a general 
 assault, ending in his being thrown on the 
 ground, beaten, and trampled on. Indeed, 
 but for the fact of many of the assailants being 
 too much the worse for wine to aim their 
 blows well, he might scarcely have escaped 
 and contrived to creep away under the shadow 
 of the portico as he had done. 
 
 He had not been resting there long when 
 the sound of flutes and pipes echoed along 
 the slopes of the Palatine, and in a few mo-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 55 
 
 ments the torch-bearers came in sight of the 
 palace, bringing Germanicus back with songs 
 and shouts to his home. 
 
 The captive boy shrank farther into the 
 shadow. For a few minutes the laurel-gar- 
 landed portico echoed with congratulations 
 and leave-takings. Then Germanicus retired 
 within the house, the festive band gradually 
 dispersed, the blaze of torches died out one 
 by one in the distance, and Siward was left 
 alone with the stars. 
 
 At last that bitter day had worn to its close ! 
 The day of ignominy was over, he thought, 
 for the captives, and the life of bondage and 
 suffering had begun. For Germanicus, the 
 .day of triumph was over, and the life of glo- 
 rious power and activity was' but beginning ! 
 How wide apart the beginning of the two 
 roads led ! " How much wider," the poor 
 boy thought, recalling with a shudder the 
 slave-revelers from whom he had escaped, 
 and the wail from the slave-prison among the 
 hills, "might not the end be! What could 
 he do but grow brutish or wicked like the 
 rest, and perhaps by and by be as cruel to 
 some new sufferer as they had been to him ?" 
 A terrjjble sense of being destined, not only 
 to suffer, but to sink through suffering, was 
 on him ; of a curse which reached not only 
 to the body but to the soul. These brutish
 
 56 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 bondsmen around him had sunk beneath it. 
 What hand in heaven or on earth could save 
 him ? 
 
 The love which was a torch kindled by the 
 love he knew not, came once more to his 
 rescue. 
 
 The mother's gentle hand rested on his 
 drooping head. He knew her touch although 
 he did not at once look up. But the ice be- 
 gan to melt from his heart, and slow burning 
 tears fell through the fingers clasped on his 
 brow. 
 
 " My son," she said, " you have done bravely 
 to day." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 She had not witnessed the scene among the 
 slave-revelers. -He thought she did not know, 
 and he would not for the world have told her. 
 
 " Siward," she continued, " your words in 
 the dawn on the hillside strengthened me to- 
 day. I did walk like a crowned queen be- 
 tween my children." 
 
 The hidden tears fell slower, but more bit- 
 terly. " Little reason had she," he thought, 
 " to feel proud of her poor helpless, beaten, 
 slave-boy." 
 
 " Siward," she went on, " I have had a great 
 proposal for you to-day. A Roman patrician 
 lady saw you to-day in the procession, and 
 she and her husband coveted you. They
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 57 
 
 asked our Lady Agrippina about you. They 
 have no son, and they want to adopt you for 
 their own. Once they thought they had too 
 many children, and, according to one of their 
 wicked customs, they cast out their own help- 
 less babes to die, that they might have no 
 more trouble with them. But a pestilence 
 came and swept away those they had saved. 
 Now, they have no child but one, who is a 
 virgin priestess of some goddess, and one a 
 sickly mis-shapen girl, who was rescued by a 
 Greek slave. And the Roman lady envied 
 me as I walked beside you, my son, and wishes 
 to adopt you for her own, and to call you by 
 their name, Clcelius." 
 
 He looked up. 
 
 " I am Siward the son of Siguna and Olave 
 the smith," he said. " They can make me 
 their slave, I will never call myself the son 
 of a Roman woman and a murderess. I am 
 thy son, mother, thine." 
 
 She said nothing. She had expected no- 
 thing else. But with that free determination 
 of the will, the bondage had passed from his 
 soul. 
 
 Battered and bruised as he was, the sense 
 re-awoke within him of being something blows 
 could not crush, nor fetters bind. His inmost 
 self was free with the only freedom worth 
 having the freedom of loving and choosing,
 
 58 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of choosing rather to suffer anything than to 
 desert those whom he loved. 
 
 Not that he reasoned this out, or could have 
 spoken of the immortal invisible spirit within. 
 What he was conscious of was not of having 
 a soul, but of having a mother whom he 
 loved. 
 
 " Mother," he said, " you had no hesitation 
 about the answer." 
 
 " Not any," she replied ; " we could not 
 give up your father's name." 
 
 " And I would not grow like these Romans," 
 he said. " Better be their slave than be them- 
 selves, mother," he added, after a pause. " I 
 have seen and heard terrible things to-day ; 
 and I have had a terrible dread. But you 
 have saved me." 
 
 " Dread of what ?" she said. 
 
 " Of growing like these Romans and their 
 slaves !" he said. " Of growing to despise all 
 women as if I had never had a mother ; to 
 disbelieve in all goodness, as if I had never 
 known you ; to be ashamed of work ; to dis- 
 honor all that makes men men and women 
 women ; the terror of sinking through the 
 pleasures of swinish beasts reveling in garb- 
 age and wallowing in the mire, to the plea- 
 sures of wild beasts reveling in the torture of 
 their victims, as these Romans do in their 
 games, and (if the slaves speak truth) in their
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 59 
 
 homes. But this dread is gone ; you have 
 come and saved me." 
 
 " What have I done ?" she said ; " what can 
 I do?" 
 
 " You have done what Siguna the wife of 
 Loki did. Surely it was a prophetess who 
 named thee," he said. " When the gods had 
 bound him fast, and the serpent had dropped 
 venom, did not Siguna hold the cup so that 
 the serpent's venom could not drop on him, 
 and burn into his heart ? The cup is your 
 heart, mother, and you have saved me." 
 
 "Child," she said, "what are you saying; 
 you are not Loki the malignant ; you, my 
 brave, bright boy ?" 
 
 "No," he said, smiling, "I am not Loki. 
 Stay thou near me, and I will never be like 
 him." 
 
 So the boy interpreted the lovely legend of 
 Loki and Siguna.* For dark as were those 
 old heathen conceptions of the gods, often on 
 some subordinate in an obscure corner of the 
 picture, falls a strange beautiful light from a 
 source unseen and unexplained. 
 
 The gods were often hard and cruel, or 
 
 * It is not meant to intimate by this that this legend or 
 other Northern legends alluded to in these pages were as 
 ancient as the first century.; but to take them as types of 
 the belief and imagination from which at one time or an- 
 other the Northern Sagas sprang.
 
 60 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 careless and cold. But in some human crea- 
 ture, such as Siguna, burns a little lowly spark 
 of unquenchable love, or invincible patience, 
 stronger and more divine, lovelier and loftier 
 than all the might of Asgard or Olympus. 
 
 For throughout those ages while men made 
 the gods, it was God who made man. 
 
 The mother went into the house and found a 
 mat and an old mantle, in which she wrapped 
 up her boy's bruised limbs ; and soon he fell 
 asleep with the sleep of youth. 
 
 But she watched above him and wept. For 
 very feeble she felt her hands to be to keep 
 off the poisonous drops. Feeble woman's 
 hands, and fettered, and who could say how 
 long the gods, or the Romans who seemed 
 their favorites and vicegerents on earth, would 
 allow even this ? 
 
 So she looked hopelessly up to the calm, 
 bright stars, and the beautiful impenetrable 
 night. But she soon ceased to weep. For 
 there was no heart to appeal to, or to weep on. 
 If there were gods above those stars, either, 
 for some unknown offence they had turned 
 against her, or they did not rule as far south 
 as Rome, or the gods of Rome were stronger, 
 or, which was perhaps the most likely thing 
 of all, they were shining still in Asgard, bright 
 and calm as the stars, and as inaccessible.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 6 1 
 
 The wail could not rise into prayer, there- 
 fore it died into despairing silence. Yet Si- 
 guna and Siward, the German captives, were 
 not the only persons in Rome to whom that 
 day had been little of a festival. 
 
 In his new palace on the western slopes of 
 the Palatine was dwelling one to whose heart 
 every shout of applause to Germanicus had 
 been a drop of the bitterest venom. And by 
 him on the icy summit where he sat was no 
 faithful hand to ward off the bitter drops. 
 
 From youth, Tiberius Cassar had breathed 
 the atmosphere of desecrated home. His mo- 
 ther, the Empress Livia, had consented to be 
 divorced from his father to share the throne 
 of Augustus. He himself had reluctantly 
 consented to abandon Vipsania, the beloved 
 wife of his youth, sister of Agrippina the 
 noble wife of Germanicus, to become the hus- 
 band of Julia, the only daughter of Augustus, 
 a woman who despised him, and whom not 
 without reason he hated ; for her crimes, 
 afterwards banished by her own father to the 
 fatal island of Pandataria. 
 
 The bonds between him and his mother, 
 strong as they were, were not such as to soften 
 or hallow life. On her side rather a dramatic 
 impersonation than affection, accomplishing 
 in her son an ambition she could not fulfil in 
 her own person. On his, a habit of deference
 
 62 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 to her authority and reverence to her judg- 
 ment which nothing but death could break, 
 but from which he felt her death an emanci- 
 pation ; identification of interest without union 
 of heart. 
 
 The sacred fire of his hearth being to him 
 thus early extinguished, in its place was sub- 
 stituted a steel mirror, in which the world 
 was reflected with exactness, but altogether 
 without glow, the world and himself. 
 
 Where the world, gazing within wall after 
 wall of his imperial palace, and fold within 
 fold of his purple draperies, caught glimpses 
 of a mysterious divinity ; he saw an imperil- 
 led mortal " holding the Roman people as a 
 wolf by the ears." 
 
 On the icy summit where the dazzled na- 
 tions saw a godlike form gloriously robed and 
 crowned, grasping the lightnings, he, chill 
 and undazzled, saw himself as he was, unillu- 
 mined by the splendor, quivering beneath the 
 lightnings he seemed to grasp. He knew 
 that he saw but a little space beyond him, 
 whilst within that little space he saw a world 
 of perils, and beyond it a surging mist through 
 which from time to time loomed on his anx- 
 ious vision the forms of men greater than he 
 threatening to rise and hurl him from his seat. 
 At the centre of that omnipotent dominion he 
 knew himself to be a mortal man, and not a
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 63 
 
 great man. Honestly therefore he recom- 
 mended all men not to worship him : whilst 
 he watched with suspicious vigilance for ev- 
 ery token of a real great man, one " born a 
 king," that like Herod he might " come and 
 worship him," in Herod's fashion. 
 
 At the core of that Empire was a heart in 
 which hope and love, and faith in woman, in 
 man, or in heaven, were frozen to death ; a 
 heart not cruel for cruelty's sake, but pos- 
 sessed by an ignoble fear and self-distrust, a 
 cynical contempt of all who did him homage, 
 and a desperate envious hatred of all whom 
 his keen wit perceived were too clear-sighted 
 or too noble to do him real homage in their 
 hearts. At this time the great objects of his 
 dread and envy were Caesar Germanicus and 
 Agrippina, whom his mother Livia also en- 
 vied and disliked, and of whose lofty charac- 
 ter, disbelieving in any noble source of such 
 loftiness, Tiberius had an especial distrust. 
 
 To the emperor, therefore, this day of the 
 Triumph of Germanicus had been a day of 
 humiliation. Not on account of the pomp 
 whose hollowness he knew, but because he 
 saw how the Roman people, the wolf whom 
 he held so desperately by the ears, fawned 
 with as fond a pride as the wolf foster-mother 
 herself on the genial young soldier, nephew 
 of Augustus, grandson of Octavia and Antony.
 
 64 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Nor to Germanicus himself (had the Ger- 
 man captive known it as he saw him disap- 
 pear within the portico?) had that day been 
 any more a true triumph than to any fettered 
 captive in the procession. 
 
 He had been dragged in his triumphal 
 chariot as reluctantly as Thusnelda herself 
 before it. 
 
 Victory was what he had desired, not a 
 hollow show of triumph. One campaign 
 more in Germany, he believed, would have 
 made him a true conqueror, would have 
 driven back the German tribes effectually, 
 and made the short line of the Elbe, instead 
 of the long windings of the Rhine, the real 
 frontier of the Empire. 
 
 From this career of conquest he had been 
 torn, from purposes he deemed worthy of 
 Roman ambition " through envy torn away 
 from a harvest of ripe glory" to be detached 
 for ever from the army which loved him, and 
 for which he had cared with a true kingly 
 care, and despatched hither and thither at the 
 will of a man who would only envy and hate 
 him the more successfully he served him. 
 
 To him and to Agrippina taken from her 
 queenly place at the head of the veterans who 
 honored her as a matron of old Rome, and 
 lovjed her boys with a household affection as 
 at once their princes and playfellows, to be
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 65 
 
 entangled in the wretched intrigues of a court 
 where a slight to her was regarded as a com- 
 pliment to the emperor's mother that day 
 was an evening, not a morning, a stepping 
 from a high place in a free, large world into 
 the narrow tortuous ways about a degraded 
 court. 
 
 No day of rejoicing to the conqueror, nor 
 to the faithful troops he had led so long ! 
 They had not forgotten the day, years since, 
 when the young Germanicus had won them 
 back from mutiny by his presence, when they 
 had gathered around him with their wrongs, 
 showing him the limbs bruised and wounded 
 by the cruelty of under-officers, and pressing 
 his hands on their toothless gums to prove by 
 how long years of service they had merited a 
 better reward ; nor how he had soothed them 
 with promises, and with largesses from his 
 own private means, a royal generosity which 
 Tiberius could not forgive. 
 
 Nor would they forget the day not long 
 afterwards when once more he had shamed 
 them back to order and allegiance, by threat- 
 ening to withdraw Agrippina and the Roman 
 ladies from the mutinous camp to the protec- 
 tion of the German allies at Treves. 
 
 The armies of Rome, after all, were them- 
 selves no such iron machines as they seemed, 
 but aggregates of impressible human crea-
 
 66 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 tures assemblies of impulsive passionate 
 Italians, keen to feel wrongs and to resent 
 them, capable of loving and trusting with ro- 
 mantic devotion" when they found any one 
 like Germanicus, a man of like passion with 
 themselves, yet of keener insight and higher 
 self-control than themselves, with a heart to 
 care for them. 
 
 And now this strong, slowly-woven bond 
 was to be rent asunder for ever. This body 
 of living men, enthusiastically attached to a 
 commander, was to become again, outwardly, 
 a machine of state, and inwardly a conglom- 
 eration of separate atoms. 
 
 To Germanicus and his army it was a day 
 of separation. The army dispersed among 
 the citizens, once more a mere fragment of 
 the empire. The conquering commander re- 
 tired into his home a mere slave of the em- 
 peror. 
 
 And sadly that night, in the homes of many 
 a patrician palace, among its gardens on the 
 hills of Rome: and in many of the crowded 
 chambers of the people whose tall houses rose 
 from the valleys below among the few in 
 that degraded population to whom the tri- 
 umph was anything higher than one of the 
 shows of the circus or the amphitheatre, came 
 back the memory of Drusus, father of Ger- 
 manicus ; and Marcellus, his uncle ; and of
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 67 
 
 Julius Cassar, first and noblest of the race, 
 throwing its shadow on the future of one 
 who, as the despairing presentiment of a cor- 
 rupted and enslaved people told them, was 
 too worthy of life to live long in such a time. 
 
 " For ever," they said, " short-lived and un- 
 fortunate are those whom the Roman people 
 love." 
 
 Thus, in the laughter of that day of triumph 
 there was heaviness, and its songs died into a 
 hopeless wail in other hearts than those of 
 the German captives. 
 
 And neither they nor any of the countless 
 sufferers in that glittering, brilliant, hopeless 
 Roman world knew of the heart that was 
 beating for them in the home at Nazareth, the 
 heart of Him, indeed, " born a king," in which 
 fear had no place, glowing but with faith and 
 hope, and with unquenchable love for all ; nor 
 what cup was being prepared to gather into 
 itself the venom of all the bitter drops, and 
 ward them off from man.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 N the dusk of the May morning a 
 young Roman maiden stood on the 
 brink of a spring on the Coelian hill, 
 in the garden of Clcelius Tullus. She 
 stood, or half leant against the rock, from be- 
 neath which the pure fresh water was slowly 
 trickling into her pitcher. Slight and lithe in 
 form, from the firm poise of the graceful head 
 to the planting of the small sandalled feet, 
 which shone on the dark mossy turf below 
 the long white stole, there was nevertheless a 
 power blended with all the grace which encir- 
 cled her with a kind of sweet awe. The joy- 
 ous half-smiling lips, the dreamy dark eyes, 
 which sent a light through the long lashes 
 like the morning sunshine on the pure shaded 
 spring she was watching ; the hands folded 
 not in lassitude, but with a firm clasp, as if they 
 had embraced each other with a happy pur- 
 pose, and would only part to help each other 
 to execute it ; the whole guileless expression 
 
 (68)
 
 VICTOR? OF THE VANQUISHED. 69 
 
 of the face, full of soul as it was, seemed more 
 childlike than womanly. The look of extreme 
 youth was increased by the absence of long 
 feminine tresses, and of all feminine ornament. 
 The hair, of a golden brown, curled and clus- 
 tered around the small head like a child's, 
 and was only bound with a purple fillet. 
 
 Yet there was a majesty about the light 
 delicate form and on the smooth straight 
 brows. No mere imperial stateliness, some- 
 thing higher and freer something to which 
 any canopy of state would have seemed a 
 tawdry appendage something which in any 
 temple of her gods would have made you feel 
 it a sanctuary. 
 
 There was a slight rustle among the ilexes 
 of the garden, and then a younger maiden, 
 kneeling down before her, embraced her knees 
 as if she had been the statue of a goddess. 
 
 "My beautiful!" said the child, "you are 
 more divine than ever. No wonder they do 
 not need any sacred images in the temple 
 where you serve." 
 
 The maiden stooped, and, raising the kneel- 
 ing child, encircled her with one arm. 
 
 " Poor little sister !" she said, and her voice 
 was simply the embodiment of her smile turn- 
 ed into music. The ring of a little child's 
 laughter was in it, with the tenderness of a 
 heavenly pity. For different, indeed, to all
 
 70 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 outward seeming, from herself was the poor 
 misshapen child who clung to her with such 
 an adoring, passionate fondness. The form 
 that of a shrunken old woman ; the face thin 
 and wan, though not without beauty ; the 
 eyes deep with the sadness of a sorrowful wo- 
 manhood. 
 
 " To-day is a great day with me, little sis- 
 ter," said the elder maiden, " and I may well 
 be clothed with joy. Yesterday completed 
 the ten years of my discipleship. This day 
 ten years since our father led me to the High 
 Priest, and the old man welcomed me to the 
 service of Rome and the goddess, and conse- 
 crated me as the vestals of our ancient Alba 
 were consecrated hundreds of years before 
 Rome was born. ' Thee, beloved, I take,' he 
 said, ' a vestal priestess, to minister in sacred 
 things, to do for the Roman people what the 
 best law has appointed.' And so, a little child, 
 I was committed Jto the care of the sacred 
 virgins, and had henceforth for my dwelling 
 the dwelling of the goddess, for my hearth- 
 fire the sacred hearth-fire of Rome. 
 
 " Ten years of training, slowly unfolding 
 before me the meaning of that consecration, 
 and now I too am to serve Rome for myself. 
 This morning, for the first time, I shall sprin- 
 kle pure water on the shrine of the goddess. 
 To-night, for the first time, to me will be
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 71 
 
 committed the charge of the sacred fire, to 
 keep it for the Roman people, for the god- 
 dess, and for our Rome. 
 
 " Little sister, have I not reason to be glad ?" 
 As she spoke she looked up. From the 
 southern slopes of the hill where they stood 
 among the gardens, beyond the undulating 
 plain of the Campagna, still dusk, the dawn 
 was flowing in a golden flood around the Al- 
 ban hills. Peak after peak rose boldly from 
 the plain, and as she glanced towards them at 
 that moment a rosy light touched the highest 
 of all, the site of the ancient temple of Jupiter 
 Latiaris, the common shrine of the pristine 
 Latin race. 
 
 " See, little sister," she said, "the finger of 
 the gods is touching the old temple of our fa- 
 thers. Beneath it is lying in its deep hollow 
 the Alban lake, and the ridge of the White 
 City where our people were cradled, and the 
 vestal princess dwelt, and the twin heroes 
 were born. Here is the marshy valley which 
 the prince our forefather drained, the dic- 
 tator, Clcelius, making the marshy land a 
 fruitful field, and bringing the water to re- 
 fresh the arid plain. The ancient channel is 
 there which our father cut through the solid 
 hills, and the waters are flowing through it 
 still in the dark under the rock arches, in 
 the sunshine through the green Campagna,
 
 72 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 below us through the valley at our feet wa- 
 ters from our Alban hills, brought hither to 
 minister to the Roman people. 
 
 " Little sister, last night the gods sent me a 
 dream. Since the days of the Clcelius, who 
 made the water flow, when our Alba was 
 razed, and our fathers were transplanted to 
 this Coelian hill, and the Cloelii became a Ro- 
 man house, once again, thou knowest, our 
 name has had a high place in the story of old 
 Rome. 
 
 " When Lars Porsenna, the Etruscan king, 
 with his armies on the Janiculum, had driven 
 the Romans to submit, and to send him the 
 ivory throne, and twenty hostages, boys and 
 maidens of the noblest blood, a virgin, Clce- 
 lia, was among them. She swam back through 
 the river, escaping the foe, leading the other 
 girls, and fled safely to Rome. But to the 
 Romans, our fathers, the faith of oaths was 
 dearer than life, or things dearer than life, 
 and they sent the maidens back. Noble deeds 
 breed nobler. Porsenna the king honored the 
 maiden, and honored the Roman fidelity, and 
 sent her back to Rome with some of the host- 
 ages as the fruit of her courage, bidding her 
 choose which she would. The girl Clcelia had 
 a mother's heart in her, as all good women 
 have, and she had pity on the helpless little 
 ones, and chose them. So the king gave her a
 
 VICTORY OF TUB VANQUISHED. 73 
 
 horse with royal trappings, and she rode home 
 to the city Rome. A fair sight it must^have 
 been to our fathers to see the young maiden 
 coming back as a conqueror, on the king's 
 horse, with the little children she had rescued 
 clustering around her. Her people would not 
 have the beautiful vision fade away. They 
 made her a statue, and there it stands to this 
 day in the Sacred Way. The Sacred Pro- 
 "cessions pass by it, and the triumphs, as yes- 
 terday by the statue of Cloelia, the maiden 
 who rescued the captive children, seated on 
 the horse Lars Porsenna gave her. 
 
 " There are many lonely hours in the tem- 
 ple, little sister ; the dreams, and the toys, and 
 the decorations of other maidens are not for 
 us. And often as I sat weaving the sacred 
 veils for the shrine, or in the night, I have 
 pictured to myself those two, of our blood, 
 who belonged to our house of old, until last 
 night, through the golden gates, the gods 
 sent me a dream. 
 
 " Clcelia, the brave maiden, came to me as 
 I slept not on horseback, as the princely 
 heroine, but clad in a plain white stole, with 
 a little child clinging to each hand and she 
 said to me, 
 
 " ' Clcelia, my sister, Vestal, thou shalt be 
 as the stream our father brought from Alba, 
 the White City on the hills. Thy life shall be 
 4
 
 74 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 a sacred stream, flowing for the service of the 
 gods and of Rome. To-morrow thy days flow 
 forth into the sunshine, from the cool shadow 
 of the rock arches, where they have been kept 
 pure. Forth into the sunshine, on through 
 the City Rome. They may make thee no 
 statue in the Sacred Way ; thou mayst never 
 hear the praise of the people, nor feel the fond 
 clinging of the children thou art saving. But 
 what recks that ? Statues crumble to dust, 
 and the praise of the people is a breath. The 
 work is real, and thou wilt do it. Thou wilt 
 keep the sacred charge for Rome.' " 
 
 The maiden ceased. Her pitcher was over- 
 flowing : she stooped to take it up, and go 
 her way. But first she clasped the poor child 
 to her heart. 
 
 " Rejoice with me, little sister," she said, 
 "for my beautiful dream has come true. To- 
 day I begin the service of Vesta and of Rome. 
 This morning I have come hither to fetch 
 fresh water to sprinkle on her shrine ; for no 
 water save pure from the heart of mother- 
 earth must touch the altar of the Sacred Fire. 
 I would not draw it to-day from the ancient 
 grotto of Egeria on the slopes below. They 
 have imprisoned the fountain, and shut it out 
 from the sunlight under heavy porticoes. 
 Moreover, Jews, dwell around it the people 
 who are said to hate all men and I would
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 75 
 
 not have an evil eye on me to-day. Where- 
 fore I have come hither to the little rock- 
 spring in our old garden, where I used to 
 play when I was a little child. I hoped, too, 
 to see thee. Rejoice with me, little sister. 
 To-day I begin the sacred priesthood. To- 
 day my life flows forth from the shadow of 
 the rock arches into the sunshine, to serve 
 our Rome." 
 
 " My beautiful, I do rejoice in thee," the 
 child replied. But then, turning away, and 
 bursting into tears, she sobbed " Oh, Clcelia 
 Pulchra, my sister, ask thy gods to have some 
 pity on me. To me they have given nothing 
 beautiful or good. My mother is ashamed of 
 me, and never walks out with me. My father 
 is kind, and likes to hear me sing ; but I am 
 no joy to him, no joy to him nor to any. I 
 am no sweet stream of life like thee ; but 
 only a marsh a waste, unsightly, unwhole- 
 some marsh." 
 
 The young priestess sat down on the mossy 
 bank, and drew the child to her, tenderly ca- 
 ressing her, and smoothing the long tresses 
 of her raven hair. 
 
 "Dear," she said, "this is not like thee. 
 Was I thoughtless to parade before thee a 
 joy thou canst not share? Then it is -thy 
 love which led me away. I thought all mine 
 was thine. What beauty or joy I have, was
 
 76 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 it not always thy joy ? thou whose heart is 
 so much more beautiful and stronger than 
 mine. And art not thou a joy to me, as I to 
 thee ? Have I not delighted in thy wisdom 
 and goodness, in all the wise things old Laon 
 has taught thee, and in that great love of 
 thine for me ? Was I wrong to forget all but 
 thy love, in thee, to-day ?" 
 
 " Not wrong," sobbed the child, but more 
 quietly. " Never wrong," she added, with a 
 sudden light irradiating her face, " to trust 
 my love ; only wrong to trust my wisdom and 
 my goodness." 
 
 Then, hiding her face and her heaving 
 breast on her sister's heart '< Oh, Clcelia, my 
 beautiful," she said, " I never found it all out 
 till yesterday at the Triumph. I was pushed 
 down and trodden on in the crowd, and must 
 have been hurt, perhaps killed, if one of the 
 captives, a young German, had not lifted me 
 up in his fettered arms, and placed me on 
 some steps by the wayside, as tenderly as a 
 mother could. But when I looked up to 
 thank him, I could see disgust struggling 
 with divine pity in his eyes ; for he was beau- 
 tiful as one of the Greek gods as the sun- 
 god, beautiful and strong. I would thou 
 couldst see him. And the people were angry 
 that the procession had been broken ; and 
 they called me a hunchback, a dwarf, and
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 77 
 
 many hideous names. And all at once it 
 flashed upon me that it is true, and why it is 
 that my mother never takes me by her side 
 to walk with her, and my father looks so sadly 
 at me. Oh, Cloelia, my sister, I understand it 
 all now ! Would to Heaven the German boy 
 had never rescued me, but that I had been 
 trampled under his feet and under the con- 
 queror's chariot. To-day I should -have been 
 buried out of sight ; away from the beautiful 
 day, away from the scornful faces out of 
 sight, where only such mis-shapen things 
 should be. They would have gathered my 
 ashes tenderly, even mine ; and my urn, even 
 mine, would have been something the sun 
 might shine on ; and thou wouldst have come 
 and wept over it, and yet been half glad that 
 the poor waste, hopeless life was over." 
 
 The Vestal had no hope wherewith to com- 
 fort the child nothing but love. But love 
 steals in to sorrowful hearts, when even hope 
 cannot enter, but has to shine outside. She 
 could only say, 
 
 " I love thee, dear ; and old Laon loves thee. 
 Our mother and father would miss thee in the 
 house, be sure ! But Laon and I what should 
 we do if thou wert gone ? Never make thine 
 obsequies, and put thyself in the urn again, 
 little sister. Thou wilt have to make mine 
 with them."
 
 78 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 And as the sisters sat clasped together, a 
 warmth crept over the poor child's heart, and 
 she looked up again in the beautiful face she 
 loved so dearly, and smiled. And in that 
 smile, on the wan, thin face, there was a beauty 
 deeper than that of the perfect face she gazed 
 on the sacred spiritual beauty born of pain 
 and self-forgetting love. The Vestal saw it, 
 and understood it. Then she rose hastily, 
 and said, 
 
 " I may not linger a moment longer from 
 the temple." 
 
 And, with another embrace, she took up her 
 pitcher and sprang lightly away. But before 
 she glided out of sight among the myrtles 
 and ilexes, she turned back, and said, 
 
 " Sweet, there is a sacred fire, an altar of 
 our goddess, on thy hearth, as well as on the 
 hearth of Rome. Keep charge of that." 
 
 At the garden door one of the lictors met 
 her, whose office it was to guard the vestals 
 when they walked through the streets, asa 
 part of the sacred state and magistracy of 
 Rome. 
 
 And so, in her white stole, with the fresh 
 water from the spring in her two-handled 
 pitcher, carefully held in both hands, she 
 glided through the narrow footpaths among 
 the 'gardens over the Ccelian hill to the tem- 
 ple at the foot of the Palatine. The low light
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 79 
 
 flamed through the vine leaves and the quiver- 
 ing olives on her, like the fire from a Vestal 
 shrine in heaven ; and the dawn touched her 
 white robe and the clustering curls of her 
 brown hair with fond sisterly fingers as she 
 went, an embodiment of the loveliest vision 
 of that old Roman world, with pure womanly 
 hands to keep the shrine of the goddess pure ; 
 to keep the sacred fire, which was the light 
 and shield of her people, burning for ever ; 
 to make the hearth of every home an altar, 
 by making the most sacred altar in the coun- 
 try a hearth-fire. 
 
 The day of the young priestess's first min- 
 istrations passed away, and the night came 
 for which she had longed, the night when first 
 the sacred fire was committed to her keeping, 
 for Rome, and every hearth in Rome. 
 
 At first, long after dark, the murmur of the 
 great city kept surging round the temple, 
 from the Palatine and Capitoline hills between 
 which it stood, and from the Forum outside. 
 Gradually the steady murmur died away. The 
 great sea of life was getting hushed, and only 
 now and then some intermittent wave of sound 
 broke against the silence. Revelers return- 
 ing through the Forum to the palaces of the 
 Palatine, or to the villas among the herbs and 
 gardens of the Pincian hill, or with noisier
 
 go VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 merriment to the crowded quarters on the 
 low ground merriment not seldom ending 
 in conflicts. 
 
 At length these intermittent sounds also 
 ceased, and the Forum outside became as 
 empty and silent as the shrine within. 
 
 Still the young priestess watched on in the 
 midst of a silence more solemn than any other 
 the silence in the midst of a great city her 
 heart full of the old Roman ideal of duty, and 
 of the heroic legends of her race. And the 
 silence bathed and flowed around her spirit 
 like a sea of still pure waters, as she sate or 
 knelt beside the altar, from time to time feed- 
 ing the sacred fire, or throwing frankincense 
 upon it, whilst the flames flickered on her 
 white stole, and lit up the purple border of 
 her sacrificial veil. 
 
 Through the open roof of the temple, open 
 as the impluvium of every Roman house, the 
 stars looked down on her, slowly entering 
 and leaving one by one the little space of sky 
 above her. 
 
 Her heart was full of glad and innocent 
 visions. " I am only doing what every Ro- 
 man matron does for her home," she thought, 
 " simple, humble, household work. This tem- 
 ple is only a hearth, open to the sky as every 
 Roman house. But I am doing it for Rome, 
 and every hearth in Rome, awake, serving all,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 8 1 
 
 while they rest on sleeping and know not of- 
 me." 
 
 Then gazing up through the clear depths 
 of the night to the stars, she wondered if the 
 stars also were hearth-fires, fed by pure divine 
 hands, and by loving hearts, loving and car- 
 ing for those who knew not. The whole world 
 seemed to her an altar for the sacred fire. 
 
 The hearth-fire she guarded and fed so care- 
 fully was linked on one side with the stars, 
 and on the other with the humblest hearth in 
 Rome. 
 
 So the maiden did her sacred woman's work 
 for her people, and kept the little island of 
 purity given to her charge, in the midst of 
 the great corrupt city. 
 
 Only one shadow lay on her heart, the 
 shadow of her little sister's blighted life. But 
 this fell heavily. For through that one irre- 
 mediable wrong, the shadow of all the irre- 
 mediable wrong and pain in the world laid its 
 burden on her heart. A burden which her 
 priesthood would not lighten. 
 
 So, from the mystery of pain and sorrow, 
 which she could not relieve, or penetrate, she 
 turned away to the sacred fire her heart and 
 hands might help to keep burning. 
 
 She ministered in the temple, a beautiful 
 type, and a living witness to the sacred aspira- 
 tions of better days, aspirations after purity
 
 82 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 -which all the corruption around could not 
 stifle, powerless as they were to purify. 
 
 Until again the dawn broke and the great 
 tumult of life began to surge around the sanc- 
 tuary in the city where the family had ceased 
 to be sacred, where the people had become 
 an idle populace of paupers living on the im- 
 perial dole of corn, and the Senate a shadowy 
 company of courtiers living on the imperial 
 smiles ; where work was ignominious, and 
 murder an amusement ; ^md there were no 
 gods but Money and Tiberius Caesar. 
 
 She ministered alone within, clothed in 
 white raiment, keeping the sacred eternal 
 fire ; whilst outside reveled the worn,an ar- 
 rayed in purple and scarlet color, having a 
 golden cup in her hand full of abominations, 
 with her merchandize of gold and silver, 
 wrung from tortured provinces, her cinna- 
 mon and odors, her fine flour and wheat, her 
 slaves outnumbering her citizens, her traffic 
 in the " bodies and souls of men." 
 
 The loveliest type of the purest aspirations 
 of that old perishing world. 
 
 x- * w * * -x- 
 
 But while the vestals kept vigil in the tem- 
 ple for Rome, through many a long night on 
 the lonely hills of Syria vigil was being kept 
 for the world, all night, in prayer to God. 
 
 One altar was in the world on which burned
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 83 
 
 the sacred eternal fire of unquenchable re- 
 deeming love, the sacred fire linked with 
 heaven and with every hearth on earth ; a 
 fire not of mere aspiration, powerless to keep 
 anything pure but itself, but of redemption, 
 which was to purify the world by consuming 
 the heart in which it glowed. 
 
 A Priesthood had begun, not only tender 
 to sympathize, but strong to save, able to bear 
 the great burden of the world and take it 
 away, and to change the irrevocable wrong 
 from curse into blessing. 
 
 But the virgins at their vestal vigils knew 
 not of it. 
 
 Nor of the great multitude clothed in white 
 robes, whom the blood of that heart was to 
 redeem and cleanse, that they also might be 
 altars from which, day and night, the fra- 
 grance of incense and the flames of the sacred 
 eternal fire might go up to heaven.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LD Laon, the Greek slave, sat on the 
 steps of the Temple of Vesta, look- 
 ing down on the Forum, while his 
 young mistress, Cloelia, the deformed 
 child, was within the sacred precincts with 
 her sister Clcelia Pulchra, the Vestal. 
 
 It was early in the morning. The sellers 
 of fruits and vegetables, just come in from the 
 country with their baskets on their heads, or 
 with their laden asses, were loudly crying 
 their wares, or bargaining with the slaves of 
 the great households, and with the poorer cit- 
 izens themselves. 
 
 Time was a plentiful commodity in Rome 
 just then. Commerce being from of old de- 
 spised by the burghers as only fit for freed- 
 men, and manual work by all Romans as only 
 fit for slaves, whilst artistic work was chiefly 
 the prerogative of Greeks, and the work of 
 government was entirely undertaken by the 
 Emperor, there was abundant leisure for con- 
 (84)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 85 
 
 versation. There was also abundant oppor- 
 tunities for cultivating it among a people of 
 whom the greater number were crowded into 
 a mass of tall houses intersected by narrow 
 winding alleys, compared with which the 
 most densely-peopled dwellings of our mod- 
 ern cities would seem spacious, so that their 
 days were spent together in the open air. 
 
 Old Laon sat and watched with an amused 
 face the various eager groups forming and 
 breaking around him, until the crowd in- 
 creased, and all grouping was merged in the 
 confused multitude. 
 
 From the Patrician Homes, large or small, 
 detached in the midst of pleasant old gardens 
 and shrubberies on the hills traversed by no 
 vulgar public roads but only by steps and 
 narrow foot-paths winding among the green 
 slopes and terraces, came slaves for early pur- 
 chases, and occasionally some nobleman, fol- 
 lowed by a troop of clients. 
 
 From the Islands of towering houses, on the 
 low ground and on the ledges of the hills, 
 with their tangled jungle of human life, troop- 
 ing down the outside staircases, and through 
 the narrow lanes, often roofed over by bal- 
 conies, came the multitudes of the Roman 
 people. 
 
 To these their houses were mere sleeping- 
 places. The Forum, the Circus, the Amphi-
 
 86 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 theatre, or the Baths were for them not mere- 
 ly places of amusement, but living-rooms, par- 
 lors, talking-places, meeting-places, and rest- 
 ing-places. 
 
 The talk of the lips, therefore, was the great 
 business of Rome. And talk of the lips most 
 strictly it behoved to be, essentially calculated 
 to lead to nothing. Any touching on deeper 
 things had been made especially perilous in 
 the days of Tiberius by the renewed law of 
 Treason, which ruled that the sacred Majesty 
 of the Emperor might be wounded by a 
 word. By the law of treason, and by the en- 
 couragement of informers to the length of 
 making them the most real officers of state. 
 Conversation, therefore, must be of the light- 
 est kind ; light as the tread on the thinnest 
 lava-crust over a recent eruption ; and the 
 great majority of freemen had little to do but 
 to talk. 
 
 Books, for the people, did not exist, and by 
 the wealthy, and even by the learned, were 
 little used. All the talking now done through 
 countless printing-offices had then to be done 
 through Roman lungs. Authors read their 
 own compositions, and the opinion of the pub- 
 lic came to them not through reviews, or 
 through the disappearance of editions, but 
 through the hush or the acclamations of their 
 listeners.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 87 
 
 Thus, on that May morning, A. D. 17, it may 
 be imagined what a tumult of tongues there 
 was around old Laon in the Forum, when all 
 Rome awoke once more to talk. 
 
 And meanwhile, from the hills all around, 
 the silent guardian temples looked down on 
 the eager, noisy throng, crowning the crowd- 
 ed heights with the long lines of their marble 
 porticoes glowing in the morning sun. 
 
 Laon had many acquaintances among all 
 classes. From time to time one and another 
 branched off from the eager crowd to ex- 
 change words with him. 
 
 First came Damaris, an old slave of Clcelius 
 Tullus, a fellow-slave with him. She seated 
 herself beside him, laying down her heavy 
 basket with a groan. 
 
 " You seem oppressed, my fair compatriot." 
 
 " Compatriot ! Thou, a mere Antiochene, a 
 Macedonian, contaminated with Syrian blood 
 and manners, and I an Athenian !" 
 
 " It is true I have Syrian blood in my veins, 
 sweet Damaris. It is that which makes me 
 so gracious and amiable. Had I been only a 
 descendant of the race which conquered for 
 Alexander, life might have been as hard for 
 me as it seems to be for thee. Thanks to my 
 Syrian mother, and my philosophy, I can 
 bend, and so escape many a blow which thy 
 less pliable nature receives and resents. The
 
 88 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 heroic firmness was good for heroic days, but 
 the new philosophy suits these. It is a pity, 
 Damaris, thou wouldst never be instructed 
 by me in philosophy." 
 
 " I would not give a rotten fig for thy phi- 
 losophy. What would thy philosophy do for 
 thee in preparing tor a supper-party like this, 
 that we are toiling about to-day ? Nothing is 
 so embittering as the lot of the slaves of these 
 poor patricians." 
 
 " Excuse me, rich freedmen are worse mas- 
 ters." 
 
 " It may be. But at any rate they do not 
 stint your oil and salt. My mistress grows 
 sourer and stingier every day. As grasping 
 as a usurer, and as proud as the Empress- 
 mother. All because one ancestor dug a fine 
 ditch some hundreds of years ago, and another 
 had an equestrian statue made to her, which 
 still stands in the Sacred Way. A choice 
 statue, doubtless, made by these Romans hun- 
 dreds of years ago ! when now, after all they 
 have -learnt of us, my son Callias says not one 
 of them in a thousand can tell a head by Prax- 
 iteles from one by a stone-mason. A good 
 thing if the Clcelii, and their statues, were all 
 buried in the old Clcelian ditch." 
 
 " Softly, my good Damaris. Say what you 
 like about their statues. Their ditches are 
 irreproachable. These Latins made unexcep-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 89 
 
 tionable ditches. And as to statues, let us re- 
 member your Athenians did not agree so well 
 with their Praxiteles while they had him. 
 Even they would have spoilt his statues if he 
 had obeyed them." 
 
 " Well, we may let Praxiteles alone. My 
 son Callias has had an order for a statue from 
 a great Syrian prince, Herod Antipas. He is 
 building a palace in a new city he has founded 
 by a Syrian lake, called Tiberias after the 
 Emperor. These provincials pay well. The 
 price will buy my son's freedom, and then he 
 will work for mine. And the noble house of 
 Cloelius may make their own ditches and sup- 
 pers to the end of time, without my aid." 
 
 " You expect great guests?" 
 
 " Yes, imperial, for aught I know ; and I 
 know not what fare, and Clcelia Tulla is come 
 herself to bargain about the provisions. She 
 would trust none of us. There are to 
 be thrushes, and dormice, and flamingoes' 
 tongues, and I know not what. Imagine how 
 our rations will be stinted for weeks to come ! 
 And imagine how the poor child you call Di- 
 odora suffers. The master is wise, and keeps 
 out of the way at the Campius Martius or the 
 Amphitheatre. At us fly pins and sticks, or 
 anything that comes to hand. But we can 
 often wriggle away and avoid them. Hap- 
 pily the gods have made anger blind. But
 
 9 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 that poor child ! The heart is not so easily 
 guarded as the head. And sarcasms are worse 
 than pins. Better for her if you had not res- 
 cued her. Better she had perished when they 
 cast her out, a helpless babe, to die in the 
 streets." 
 
 " Better altogether, Damaris, if we had not 
 these inconvenient, irregular things called 
 hearts.. We should make far better working 
 machines. The world would go quite smooth- 
 ly, like the stars ; philosophy would find half 
 her work done ; and there would be no his- 
 tory to write." 
 
 " Well," he continued, " that act of folly of 
 mine had well-nigh been undone this week, 
 had it not been for another of "those irregular 
 impulses of hearts. The child would have 
 been trampled to death in the Triumph if a 
 young German captive had not lifted her up 
 and placed her in safety, fettered as he was. 
 Poor fellow ! he caught some hard blows for 
 his pains. I would fain see him again. There 
 was something in his high, bold bearing which 
 made me think bondage is like to prove bit- 
 ter to him." 
 
 " But, ah !" he exclaimed, suddenly, " who 
 is that tall lad, with fair long hair, in a dark 
 slave's dress, carrying a load of torch wood ?" 
 
 Whilst he spoke he had been steadily scan- 
 ning the crowd, as if in search of some one.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 91 
 
 At that moment he started from the steps and 
 made a dart into the thick of the throng. 
 
 Siward recognized at once the kindly eyes 
 in perpetual debate with the sarcastic mouth. 
 But he would not turn aside, as Laon asked 
 him, for a morning draught of wine. He 
 had been given a task, and he must hasten to 
 do it. 
 
 " You are new at the work," said the old 
 man, as he walked beside him. " No slave 
 thinks of going straight on a message. See 
 them hovering around the cook shops and the 
 wine shops, stuffing the fruit into their mouth 
 jesting with the flower-girls from the Cam- 
 pagna. It costs them nothing. Their time 
 is their masters' ; and it is for the master, 
 doubtless, they are making these hard bar- 
 gains ! and what harm if they share the 
 profits ?" 
 
 " I am new at the work," said the boy, not 
 in a very gracious voice. " They have made 
 me a slave. But I will not make myself a 
 thief and a liar, nor as one of these lazy glut- 
 tonous swine." 
 
 " Not so bad for a young barbarian," chuck- 
 led old Laon. " Not so bad, if it had been 
 declaimed at the Porch. Master thyself, and 
 no man can make thee a slave." 
 
 " Boy," he continued, " the load hurts thee ; 
 thou art lame."
 
 9 3 VICTORY OF TEE VANQUISHED. 
 
 The boy flushed ; for a moment he was si- 
 lent. But the kindness of the tone and of 
 the eyes into which he glanced unlocked his 
 heart. 
 
 " My- shoulders are bruised ; but the load 
 had to be carried, and I am doing it as well 
 as I can." 
 
 " If thou hast to be beaten, it shall not be 
 for doing wrong, eh ?" said the old man. 
 
 " I have not been beaten by any one who 
 had a right," said the boy. " I have only been 
 knocked down and kicked about by a base 
 herd of slaves." 
 
 The old man shook his head, and laid his 
 hand on the boy's arm. 
 
 " Gently, my son, gently," he said. " Slaves 
 will not stand being called names by any but 
 their masters." 
 
 " I did not .call them names," Siward re- 
 plied ; " they called me names." 
 
 " For instance ?" 
 
 " They asked -me of my parentage. And 
 when I said that my father was noble, and 
 that he worked at his own smithy, they called 
 me ' the patrician blacksmith,' and jeered at 
 my father and my mother, until I had no an- 
 swer left but to knock one of them down." 
 
 " Not wise," said the old man drily ; " he- 
 roic, but not wise. A blacksmith's, my son, 
 is not considered a patrician employment in
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 93 
 
 Rome. It was a misunderstanding. The mis- 
 fortune is this : Your people are living in a 
 different era from these Romans. You are 
 still in your heroic age. We also, Greeks and 
 Latins, have had this ; one of the Homeric 
 gods was a blacksmith, or at least a smith. 
 He made thrones and spears for the gods and 
 the goddesses. And they thought a great 
 deal of him. But that is a long while ago. 
 We Greeks and Latins have long since out- 
 lived our heroic age. And blacksmiths are 
 no longer honored amongst us as they should 
 be. Nor, indeed, workmen of any kind. The 
 Roman people decline to work. Why should 
 they ? Tiberius Caesar gives them their daily 
 bread Alexandrian corn, and salt, and the 
 Games. The Roman patricians scorn com- 
 merce. Naturally. They can plunder prov- 
 inces." 
 
 The boy looked up, half doubting whether 
 he was being again made a butt of. The wits 
 of these southern people were so sharp that a 
 straightforward German did not perceive he 
 was hit by their jests, until he saw every one 
 around laughing at his discomfiture. 
 
 " I speak with feeling, my son," Laon re- 
 sumed ; " for I also am a blacksmith, or at 
 least a smith. And I am far from being hon- 
 ored as I ought to be. I am also a slave. 
 Not ten days since my mistress was not
 
 94 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 pleased with a brooch I had mended for her, 
 and she called me a ugly, lame, old fool, and 
 scratched my face with the pin. It was not a 
 glorious wound, rather ignominious. But it 
 hurt considerably. You may still see the scar. 
 And the name she called me was not pleas- 
 ant. Not the more so because it is true. You 
 see, I am old, and lame, and not beautiful. 
 But then it was easier for me to bear than for 
 you, because I was not brought up in the he- 
 roic age. Therefore what seems to you high 
 tragedy, is to me simply uncomfortable com- 
 edy. I feel the scratch, and the indignity ; 
 but I smile." 
 
 " You are a smith !" rejoined Siward, go- 
 ing straight to the only point in Laon's dis- 
 course that was quite clear to him. " I wish 
 I could learn of you. The Roman weapons 
 are better than ours. My father always said 
 so." 
 
 " You wish you could learn of me ? It 
 might perhaps be managed. You would be 
 more valuable to your master if you knew a 
 trade. And if that would be an inducement, 
 I would teach you for nothing. Clrelius Tul- 
 lus would, I think, permit this as a reward to 
 the boy who rescued his daughter. Not that 
 we must presume much on that ; for I once 
 did the same ! Boy, you have a strong arm, 
 and you used it well that day."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 95 
 
 " Poor deformed child !" said the boy ; " she 
 did not look as if she needed anything more 
 to make her life miserable. Was she hurt ?" 
 
 " Only by the rough words of the crowd. 
 They spoke uncivilly of her deformity. She 
 did not like being called names, any more 
 than you or I. None the more because they 
 are true. She is not well shaped ; and I am 
 lame, and hardly to be called beautiful ; and 
 you are the son of a blacksmith, and also 
 noble. We must try not to mind if people call 
 us so." 
 
 For the first time Siward caught the mean- 
 ing of the old man, and smiled, a broad, frank 
 German smile and then he even laughed, a 
 hearty German laugh. 
 
 " I have been a fool to mind them," he said. 
 "If you can get me into your smithy, I will 
 work for you as if it were at my father's forge 
 in the Lippe Valley. And you will make me 
 wise as you are." 
 
 " Nay," said the old man. " Wait a little. I 
 did not throw my wisdom into the bargain !" 
 
 They had reached the door of the palace of 
 Germanicus. 
 
 Laon turned back to wait for his young 
 mistress. 
 
 And Siward said to Siguna, when he met 
 her next, 
 
 " Mother, I have found an old man who
 
 96 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 seems as wise as Odin's ravens. He says he 
 will teach me to make swords. For Her- 
 man !" he added, in a low voice " for Her- 
 man, and our people in the forests ! They 
 make good spears and swords at Rome." 
 
 Her heart bounded to see something of the 
 old light on his frank brow again. 
 
 And little Hilda stretched out her arms to 
 him, as if she felt the sunshine on his face, 
 and unfolded in it like a flower. 
 
 And for the time, in all the palace of the 
 brave Germanicus and his wife, with their 
 beautiful children (one of them the boy Calig- 
 ula, darling of the Roman soldiers), there were 
 no hearts lighter than those of the German 
 captives. 
 
 For Hope had lit up the world for them. 
 And in all the empire of Tiberius Caesar Hope 
 had little free space to breathe in. 
 
 There was, however, one terrible sight in- 
 delibly stamped on Siward's memory, of 
 which he had never spoken to his mother 
 or to any one. 
 
 On that May morning before the Triumph, 
 when he and Siguna had sat together at the 
 tent-door on the hills, watching the dawn, 
 when the silence was pierced by those wails 
 from the slave-prison, an irresistible impulse 
 of curiosity and sympathy had urged the boy
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 97 
 
 to find out what had caused those cries of 
 anguish. 
 
 Alone, therefore, after his mother had been 
 summoned away, he had found an opportu- 
 nity to creep down the hill-side to the place 
 whence the cries proceeded, and there on a 
 hillock, visible from a great distance around, 
 he had seen a number of slaves set up two 
 cross pieces of wood, with a living man nailed 
 to them. 
 
 They supported his feet with a piece of 
 wood, so that he was not altogether suspended 
 and then the executioners and the spectators 
 dispersed, leaving the victim exposed in his 
 ignominy and agony to die slowly of pain and 
 hunger. 
 
 From the opposite slope where Siward 
 stood the writhings of the tortured victim 
 were only too visible, and his cries only too 
 clearly heard. For a few minutes Siward 
 stood trembling, fascinated by the revolting 
 sight. 
 
 Then he turned back to the camp. As he 
 turned away, he met a fisherman carrying a 
 basket of fish to the villa to which the slave- 
 prison belonged. 
 
 There must have been a deep horror im- 
 printed on the boy's face, for the man an- 
 swered it. 
 
 " It is only a slave !" he said, as he passed. 
 5
 
 98 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " None but the basest criminals, or slaves, are 
 punished thus." 
 
 " Will he be long dying ?" Siward asked. 
 
 " Not many days. It depends partly on 
 whether they can sleep. The masters think 
 this a good way to show the slaves, now and 
 then, what they can do if they like. It is not 
 so very long since the last slave-insurrection. 
 And they do not want another." 
 
 And the fisherman passed on. 
 
 But from Siward's mind that dreadful image 
 never faded. 
 
 He trusted his mother knew nothing of it. 
 But in many a lonely hour it came back on 
 him, and gave a feverish intensity to all his 
 endeavors to work for his own liberation and 
 that of his people from a tyranny which re- 
 served such tortures for those it dreaded.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ENDERLY the old man piloted the 
 child from the Temple of Vesta 
 through the Forum, and amongst 
 
 J the crowds of laden wagons, char- 
 
 iots with four horses abreast, men crying 
 their wares in all keys and dialects, which 
 thronged the Sacred Way, in -a city which 
 counted its population by hundreds of thou- 
 sands, and had only two carriage-roads, and 
 scarcely any shops. 
 
 At length they had skirted the Palatine, 
 and branched off into a footpath among the 
 gardens on the Ccelian, slowly climbing the 
 steps together. 
 
 " I have seen thy deliverer, Clcelia Dio- 
 dora," said Laon. " He also finds life not al- 
 together smooth, like so many, from the 
 multitudes of the Roman people, who exist 
 on the crust and salt, and the Games, to the 
 Emperor, who gives them all things." 
 
 She laid her hand on his arm, looking up 
 
 (99)
 
 100 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 into his face with eyes that flashed almost 
 fiercely. 
 
 " Stop, Laon, stop !" she said. " I have 
 been with Clcelia the Vestal, my sister, and 
 that is like being among the gods on Olym- 
 pus. I have been drinking in her beauty and 
 goodness like nectar. Do not make every- 
 thing gray to me. I will not have it. I will 
 sit in my darkness, and call it darkness. But 
 I will look out on the light, and see it glow 
 in the sky, and burn on the hills, and dance 
 on the waters. And I will not have the light 
 called darkness to please me, because I am 
 not in it." Then gently she added, 
 
 " I will sit in the darkness, as in the old 
 days, when I did not know I was a blot on the 
 light, in the little dark room behind thy work- 
 shop looking through the lattice at thee, and 
 watching the sparks from thy fire, or listening 
 to the wise talk. Oh, Laon," she concluded, 
 with a sudden change, impulsive and intense 
 as she was, " If I could only sit there always, 
 and dress thy olives and onions, and cook thy 
 fish for thee, as I used to hope I should ! " 
 
 " Child, I did it for the best," he said. " Could 
 I withhold thee from thy mother, when I heard 
 her moaning and wailing for but one of her 
 dead children ? I thought that nurture and 
 culture better than I could give might yet re- 
 store thee."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. IQI 
 
 " Was I like what I am, when thou didst 
 first find me ?" she asked in a low voice, after 
 a pause, " when I lay, a little, helpless, wail- 
 ing babe by the wayside, abandoned by all, 
 and thou savedst me ?" 
 
 " Now I know little what thou wert like," 
 he said. " It may be thy little tender frame 
 got some twist or hurt when they cast thee 
 out. I was not learned in the looks or ways 
 of babes. Thy cry went to my heart." 
 
 " And afterwards was I like other chil- 
 dren, at first ?" 
 
 " How can I tell ?" he said. " I knew not 
 the ways of other children. To me thou wert 
 not like any other child with thy innocent, 
 fondling ways, and thy sweet prattle, and thy 
 voice, which always will be the sweetest voice 
 in the world, and the wonderful wisdom of 
 thy questions, searching into depths Plato 
 could not have fathomed. To me thou wert as 
 the sweet childhood of the world as the gol- 
 den age of Greece come back again as a lyric 
 springing up ever fresh. All the fair legends 
 of the gods lived again in thee. Thou wert 
 to me as an image dropped down from Jupi- 
 ter on my poor hearth to make it as glad as 
 Olympus. And I called thee Diodora. What 
 did it matter to me what others thought thee 
 like? Thou wert, and art, my god -given. 
 Images dropped down from heaven are sel-
 
 102 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 dom beautiful. Diana of the Ephcsians is a 
 monster, ending in a shapeless piece of wood. 
 The olive-wood Athena the Parthenon had 
 little of the beauty of the golden and ivory 
 statue of Phidias. What did that matter ? It 
 had come down from heaven, and was the 
 most sacred treasure of Athens." 
 
 " It was hard then to thee to give me up." 
 
 " Ijt was like taking the sun out of heaven. 
 But I loved thee. And I thought that I 
 should see my darling the delight of a Patri- 
 cian house, one day wearing the bride's saff- 
 ron veil." 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! Laon !" 
 
 He looked down at the drooping, quivering 
 eyelids and the flushed face. And he saw she 
 was no longer a mere child. 
 
 " Laon," she said, " what if I could come 
 back to thee again. My mother has seen that 
 German boy thou callest my deliverer. She 
 and my father think they might adopt him. 
 And then, perhaps, I might come back to the 
 little room behind the workshop with thee. 
 I should leave little lack of sunshine in my 
 home, and it would be so sweet to get into 
 the shade again with thee. And I could live 
 between thy house and my sister's temple. 
 Perhaps, as she says, make thy house some- 
 thing of a temple !" 
 
 "Would the lad consent to this?" Laon 
 asked.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " His mother says he would not ; that he 
 is a German, and will not be made a Roman ; 
 and that he added some terrible things about 
 women who expose their babes to die. He 
 called them murderesses, Laon. It seems the 
 Germans think this a crime. 4 But think of all 
 that can be suffered by a slave : the terrible 
 thong knotted with sharp stones, the furca, 
 and the degradation, and " she added, in a 
 low voice " the cross ! Surely he cannot re- 
 fuse such a change." 
 
 " I do not know," Laon answered, musingly. 
 " I do not know. That boy could endure 
 much. And I think he has learned there are 
 things worse than pain or death. But he is 
 coming to me to learn my trade, Diodora, 
 and I will see." 
 
 " Thou wouldst not persuade him to any- 
 thing against his good, for my sake, Laon ?" 
 she said, timidly. " I have never liked to 
 burden thee with complaints. But this pal- 
 ace is no home to me." 
 
 " They are not cruel to thee, little one ?" 
 he said, in a low voice. 
 
 " No one means to be," she said ; " but my 
 mother, you know, was beautiful, and people 
 say my face is, or would have been, like hers, 
 and that displeases her. And her delight is 
 in jewels and in the toilette ; and sometimes, 
 when Damaris cannot make her quite as fair
 
 104 VICTOR T OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 as she used to be, she is angry with the cos- 
 metics and with Damaris, and when she is 
 angry the sight of me seems to vex her past 
 endurance. 
 
 " But I am not angry with her," continued 
 the child, " for I think the truth is she is angry 
 with herself. If I had done what she has with 
 me, I should have hated myself, and hated 
 every one." 
 
 "Reason enough," murmured Laon, gut- 
 turally. 
 
 "And my father likes me to sit in the 
 shadow and sing him lays of old Rome, es- 
 pecially of our house, of the Clcelius who 
 made the aqueduct, and the Clcelia who saved 
 the children, or of Virginia and the Tarquins, 
 or of Egeria the nymph, whose grotto was in 
 the slopes of the hill below us. My father 
 might miss me, and yet, I think, not much. 
 For I heard him say bitterly, one day, I was 
 a symbol of what Rome had fallen to, the 
 countenance and the voice of the old Rome 
 left, but the whole body of the people shape- 
 less, helpless, a ruin and a disgrace." 
 
 " It would be sweet to thee to have thy 
 dwelling again with me," said the old man, 
 musing, " in the little dark room behind the 
 workshop." 
 
 They had reached the garden door on the 
 southern slopes of the hill, and suddenly as it
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 105 
 
 opened, and they entered from the shadow of 
 the narrow pathway between the walls, all 
 the wealth of the May sunshine burst on them, 
 lighting up the beds of purple and saffron cro- 
 cuses, the broad reaches of the Campagna and 
 beyond, the purple and saffron Alban hills. 
 " Sweeter to thee than this ?" he asked. 
 
 " What is all the sunshine outside to being 
 a little bit of sunshine myself to thee, Laon?" 
 
 " Well, I did my best for thee," said the old 
 man, in a husky voice ; " but perhaps thou art 
 right, Diodora, my god-given. Perhaps thou 
 art right. In our Greece, of old, we might 
 have found thee a place of honor. Thou 
 shouldst have sung divine songs for all time 
 like Sappho, or Erinna. We would have 
 found thee a place to make sunshine in." 
 
 " Would you ?" said the girl, doubtingly. 
 " Sappho was beautiful, yet she died of love. 
 Erinna was chained to her spinning-wheel, 
 and faded away early, being I suppose be- 
 loved of the gods. Have you not told me it 
 was not the matrons and the good women 
 who were eloquent and wise in your Greece ? 
 And," she added with a shudder, " I always 
 think of Thersites. Lameness and deformity 
 were not not made easy for him among your 
 heroes ! I think you would have found lit- 
 tle place for anything not beautiful in your 
 Greece, Laon, here, below, or on Olympus. 
 5*
 
 106 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 You naturally think the ugly must be wicked 
 and malignant. And perhaps they are," she 
 concluded very sorrowfully ; " perhaps they 
 are, or become so. It is hard to be hated and 
 not to hate." 
 
 " Poor child," Laon replied in a tremulous 
 voice ; " poor child. Perhaps I did ill for thee. 
 Life is bitter for all ; more than to most for 
 thee. It were well to have as little as might 
 be of it. If only we were wise, and were not 
 so foolish as to love and miss each other. 
 And if one knew a little more surely what 
 death is !"
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IWARD was permitted to learn La- 
 on's trade. And a great friendship 
 sprang up between the two. 
 
 Once Laon had attempted to sug- 
 gest that the boy should consent to be adopt- 
 ed into the Clcelian house. 
 
 But the storm that met the proposition pre- 
 vented his ever making it again. 
 
 ." My name is Siward, son of Olave and 
 Siguna, a freeman and freewoman, good and 
 brave and free, and German. Shall I submit 
 to the infamy of being called the son of a 
 murderer and a murderess? Worst of all 
 murders, who cast out their own helpless 
 babe to perish !" 
 
 " Strong words, my son," said the old man, 
 " strong words. Have a care, lad ; words are 
 held crimes now in Rome. They are always 
 weapons sharper and more perilous than any 
 I can make. Keep them in a sheath, my son." 
 
 But he pursued the subject no further.
 
 108 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " Strange gifts have come to me in this beg- 
 garly little house," he would say. " First the 
 child Diodora, and then thou. Childhood and 
 youth. The golden age and the heroic age, 
 always recurring in this decrepit old world. 
 The leaves are always young, even when the 
 trees are hollow with decay. What must it 
 have been when the world itself was young?" 
 
 " But our world is not old," Siward would 
 say ; " our world in the forests is young." 
 
 And strange interchanges of legend passed 
 between them. 
 
 Laon told the beautiful Greek stories of 
 courage and endurance, of dragons and deliv- 
 erers, of Siren voices resisted and the Golden 
 Fleece won, of labors persevered in to the 
 death, of noble battle, of the joy of hard-won 
 victory, and the nobleness higher even than 
 that of the victors in the vanquished, all the 
 old legends moulded into perfect form and 
 music through Greek art. 
 
 And in return Siward gave shapeless as 
 the mists on his northern hills, and tangled as 
 the paths through his northern forests, not yet 
 fashioned even as far into definite shape as we 
 see them old Teuton legends of the mighty 
 ^Esir and their golden Asgard ; of Loki, the 
 Malignant, who penetrated even into the city 
 of the gods, and the gods who could scarce 
 penetrate into the city of death, still less res-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. iog 
 
 cue any thence, even Baldur the Beautiful, 
 the beloved of gods, and men, and all crea- 
 tures; of Siguna, who loved her lost Loke, 
 fallen and black-hearted as he was, when the 
 gods and all creatures hated him, and kept 
 off the poison from him, age after age ; of the 
 dark unknown worlds, and the dark unknown 
 ages that encircle everywhere the little world 
 and little life of man ; of the cloud-dwellings 
 and the fire-abysses ; of the storm and chaos 
 in which all things began, and the chaotic 
 storm and wrath in which all things, even As- 
 gard and the gods, must end ; of the Tree of 
 Life, evermore gnawed at the root, and ever- 
 more fed at the root by waters brought by 
 pure virgin hands from the living springs ; of 
 Odin, with the raven, foreseeing the wreck he 
 could not avert ; and through all of a veiled 
 light afar off, mystical and sweet ; of Baldur, 
 the beloved, the divine, whom all the creat- 
 ures loved and wept, buried deep in the dark 
 dwellings of Death, unable to break through 
 them, unable to irradiate the darkness, yet 
 never assimilated to the darkness ; living in 
 the heart of the death-kingdom ; always a dim 
 unquenchable hope glowing far down in the 
 depths. 
 
 Old Laon listened, and responded with 
 the great tragedy of the Bound Titan, who 
 brought the sacred fire to man ; of the stir-
 
 HO VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 ring's of soft wings around his agony, of the 
 lament of the tortures, of the dim glimpses of 
 a far-off hope, of some deliverer to be born in 
 the after-ages out of much anguish. 
 
 " Srange !" he would murmur, " strange ! 
 Barbarians as these are, there is something in 
 them that vibrates to our music as these Lat- 
 ins never can. 
 
 " These Romans are ever the centre of the 
 world to themselves, and see nothing above 
 their own stature. Of our Homeric legends 
 what can they make but a pious ^Eneas, from 
 whom can be traced in lineal succession the 
 pedigree of a divine Augustus? No unan- 
 swerable riddles in the world for them : no 
 cloud-dwellings and fire-abysses ! A very 
 solid, definite world this to them, requiring 
 solidly-built ditches to drain it, and well-made 
 roads to cross it, which they make. In fact, 
 they never had more than one god whom they 
 really worshiped. The divinity of the Ro- 
 mans in their noble days was Rome. Their 
 Jove was Jupiter the Capitoline, not Zeus the 
 Olympian. The lesser gods were all supreme- 
 ly occupied, not with each other, but with 
 Rome. Nothing could tempt the god Bound- 
 ary to desert his ancient home on the Capito- 
 line, or to recede from the utmost pillar Ro- 
 man ambition set up to him at the furthest 
 limit of conquest. Janus threw open his tern-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. m 
 
 pie-gates and poured thence a sudden flood, 
 sweeping back the enemies of Rome ; where- 
 fore in time of war his temple is ever open. 
 They had temples to Roman virtues (when 
 there were Roman virtues) to Industry, to 
 Fidelity, to Concord, to Hope, Hope in the 
 destiny of Rome, which once the whole peo- 
 ple thanked a defeated general for not aban- 
 doning. Each house had its lords and pro- 
 tectors, its Lares and Penates, guardians of 
 Roman hearths. Their priests were no se- 
 cluded worshipers of the Invisible, but minis- 
 ters of state, augurs of battle, sacrificing, and 
 searching the will of the gods by auguries, for 
 Rome. 
 
 " In the temple of Vesta the virgin priest- 
 esses guard the sacred fire for Rome ; and in 
 the camp or on the battle-field the Roman 
 eagles must be guarded as religiously as the 
 Sacred Fire. In their noblest legends, broth- 
 er, sister, wife, husband, life, were sacrificed 
 unhesitatingly for Rome, for the republic, the 
 city, the country. Patriotism was the ancient 
 religion of Rome." 
 
 "And now?" said Siward. 
 
 " There is no Rome now, so say the noblest 
 Romans. The Roman senate is a name. The 
 Roman people a mob of idle beggars. The 
 old temples stand, and incense is burned on 
 every shrine. But still the Romans have only 
 one god whom they really worship."
 
 112 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 "Who is he?" said the boy eagerly. "He 
 must be strong." 
 
 " Caesar !" said the old woman in a low 
 voice. 
 
 " I have seen a temple to Julius Caesar on 
 the summit of the Velia, fronting the Temple 
 of Jove in the Capitol," said Siward. 
 
 " Yes ; he was the first. But he is only 
 adored now for the sake of the third ; the liv- 
 ing Caesar. Tiberius Caesar is the real god 
 of Rome. Caesar is no shadowy dweller 
 among the Dii Manes, in Elysium, or any- 
 where else. He must be terrible and living. 
 He must be able to give the Roman daily 
 bread to eat, and provinces to plunder." 
 
 "He has no temples?" asked Siward; "I 
 have seen none." 
 
 " No," replied Laon. " His worshipers have 
 entreated permission to erect him altars and 
 temples ; but he will not suffer it. Strange to 
 say, this divine man, whom all men worship, 
 does not worship himself. He does not be- 
 lieve himself divine. But this religion has no 
 need of temples. There are no mysteries in 
 it. Its rites are practical as the Roman roads 
 and ditches. The Temple of Caesar is the 
 world. His symbols are in every man's hand. 
 Shall I show you one !" 
 
 The old man took out a coin with the head 
 of Tiberius.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. u$ 
 
 " Patriotism was the religion of the old Ro- 
 mans," he concluded. " The religion of mod- 
 ern Romans is the service of Caesar. Of the 
 living Cassar," he concluded, emphatically ; 
 " since even the Caesars continue not, by rea- 
 son of Death." 
 
 " Death cannot be kept even out of As- 
 gard !" observed the boy. " But tell me, La- 
 on, what kind of a man is Csesar ? For after 
 all he is a man. I have seen him talking with 
 our Csesar Germanicus like other men. I 
 have stood mute and motionless for hours 
 through the night, waiting on the table be- 
 hind him at a feast. And I have seen him eat. 
 I have seen his slaves cut up the meat for him 
 into small morsels, after the fashion of patri- 
 cians here, and of babes among us. He needs 
 to eat, like other men, and to sleep. But this 
 also do they do in Valhalla. The monstrous 
 boar which the heroes eat by night is put to- 
 gether by day, out of the bones, to be eaten 
 to-morrow. But Odin eats not. Wine is meat 
 and drink to him. Which of our gods, or of 
 yours, is Tiberius like ? Is he like Odin, or 
 Baldur ? Or like Apollo, who seems the great 
 god of your Greece the god with the lyre, 
 warrior and poet and king and sea-god, who 
 killed the dragon?" 
 
 Laon's eyes twinkled with a strange light 
 as he glanced round to see no one was near.
 
 114 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " It is not always safe to speak one's mind 
 of the gods. They are said to use lightnings 
 instead of swords. And this god, if he has no 
 lightnings, has axes and rods, which, to our 
 mortal eyes, hit with more precision and cer- 
 tainty. There is a crime called the Wounded 
 Majesty of Cassar. A disrespectful word 
 spoken against Cassar is the blasphemy of this 
 Roman religion. For this blasphemy there is 
 no expiation. Which of the gods is Tiberius 
 Csesar like?" he continued, recurring to Si- 
 ward's question. " Did you not tell me your 
 Odin had a raven which brings him tidings 
 of all that is said and done throughout the 
 world? Tiberius Csesar has a countless num- 
 ber of such ravens. They are called Inform- 
 ers. They wear no livery of state. But they 
 are the chief police of the state. They watch 
 by every hearth. You might be such a raven 
 for Germanicus, if you wished. It is said the 
 young Cassar does not too well love the reign- 
 ing Cassar. It is certain Tiberius Cassar hates 
 Germanicus. You might hear one day some 
 careless word, and report it to the Emper- 
 or. And for that word you might earn free- 
 dom, riches, honors honors such as Caesar 
 can give." 
 
 " I earn such honors as those !" exclaimed 
 Siward. " In Germany we call that treach- 
 ery. Does Tiberius choose to be served thus ?
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ng 
 
 This is not like Baldur or any noble being. 
 Can any love him and serve him freely ?" 
 
 " I certainly never heard that any one loved 
 Tiberius Caesar, unless it be the Empress 
 Mother, who won the sceptre for him," said 
 Laon ; " or that any served him freely. Nor 
 did I ever hear that he loved any one, or 
 sought that any one should love him or serve 
 him freely. I myself once heard him say in 
 Greek as he came out of the senate, ' Hoiv fit 
 these men are for slavery' But he can pay ; 
 and he can slay. What could his worshipers 
 want more ? For what is this love you speak 
 of? Are your gods or ours always or alto- 
 gether good, that they should be loved ? At 
 least what we should call good. Are morals 
 the same for gods and men ? Is Tiberius Cse- 
 sar to be judged as you and I should judge 
 ourselves? The gods are powerful. Caesar 
 is powerful. Is not that enough ?" 
 
 " Is he the god of all Romans" asked Si- 
 ward, perplexed. 
 
 " Some Romans think they worship our 
 gods the gods of Greece," said Laon; "as 
 they think they understand the poets and phi- 
 losophers of Greece, and even make Greek 
 poetry and philosophy themselves. They 
 profess great reverence for our Athens, and 
 like to be considered fellow-citizens and fellow- 
 worshipers with the Greeks who made the
 
 Il6 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 beautiful old statues and built the beautiful 
 old temples. But I doubt if the tribes of men 
 can worship each other's gods. They borrow 
 the names. But through all the Grecian dra- 
 peries comes the head, not of Zeus, the cloud- 
 compeller, throned in majestic calm, but the 
 strong soldier's face of the Capitoline Jove. 
 
 " Similarly, if you tried to adore our Apollo, 
 your heart would not see the joyous Apollo, 
 the radiant, the far-darting, with the lyre and 
 silver bow, but Baldur your beautiful, with a 
 divine sadness on his face, wept by all creat- 
 ures, with the shadow of your clouds on his 
 brow. But every religion has lesser gods. 
 Among those of the Romans there is Juno 
 Moneta, the Counselor. She had her shrine 
 of old on the Citadel of Rome, opposite the 
 Capitol. It is now the Roman Mint. This 
 temple is erected still in the citadel of many 
 a heart. Money must ever be a god of nations 
 and men, among whom the Temple of Hope 
 is in ruins." 
 
 " The gods of men are diverse, my mother 
 said, as their fathers and their dwellings. Let 
 each keep to his own." 
 
 " Your mother is wise. But so think not 
 the Romans. There is a restless searching 
 among them hither and thither for new gods, 
 especially among women. Rome is full of 
 new temples and new rites, brought from the
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED, uj 
 
 ends of the earth, from Egypt, from Persia. 
 Some Roman noble matrons have even em- 
 braced a gloomy Syrian superstition peculiar 
 to a tribe called Jews, a misanthropic race, 
 who hate all other races of men will not even 
 eat with them, nor enter the temples, nor as- 
 sist at game or race ; and in their own sanc- 
 tuaries have no symbol or sacred image, but 
 an ancient book, which they kiss, and seem to 
 listen to as if it were divine. Beyond this I 
 know not that they have any other shrine, 
 unless it be the shrine of the Mint goddess. 
 Money-lenders many of them are, with a mar- 
 vellous faculty for growing rich. What beauty 
 or good there is in them, or in their worship, 
 it is difficult to say. But women are capri- 
 cious ; and this worship of Caesar does not 
 seem to suit the hearts of women." 
 
 Siward looked earnestly into Laon's face, 
 as he was wont to do when perplexed with 
 his words, to read the meaning in his eyes. 
 
 " Is Caesar your god, Laon ?" he asked ab- 
 ruptly. 
 
 " I told you he had forbidden that men 
 should worship him. Should I disobey the 
 decree of Caesar ? He has no temple. How 
 can I burn incense to him ?" 
 
 "Laon," said the boy, "in what temple do 
 you burn incense ?" 
 
 The old man paused a moment.
 
 118 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " In the nearest, my son," he replied at 
 length concisely. " Do not the immortals 
 know that I am lame?" 
 
 Siward looked dissatisfied. 
 
 "What matters it," Laon continued, "in 
 what temple an old slave like Laon worships ? 
 Have my vows and supplications brought 
 down such divine favors on me, that any need 
 seek to imitate them ?" 
 
 " Laon," the boy replied, in his straigthfor- 
 ward way, "your gods, I think, have given 
 you the best gifts. They have made you pa- 
 tient and kind and wise, and strong in heart. 
 I wish to know your gods." 
 
 " Boy," said the old man, gravely, " you 
 have scarcely yet needed the barber's skill. 
 Shall I tell you in a moment all the secrets of 
 seventy years ? There is something we call 
 love of wisdom, which, when old faiths die, 
 may replace them perhaps with what they 
 meant. But while the old faith lives, let it 
 live. The meaning is there, if veiled. And 
 if it make the life brave and pure, what can 
 philosophy do more? Our wisest said, De- 
 stroy not the old legends, the truth is in them. 
 
 " But come," he added, turning the subject, 
 " I will show you what the divine government 
 of this Caesar is like." 
 
 And he took from a drawer a cast from the 
 cameo of the Apotheosis of Augustus. Si- 
 ward looked at it long.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ug 
 
 Above, the Emperor enthroned in easy 
 majesty among the gods, beside the divine 
 city Rome, with her crown of towers, himself 
 placing on his own head the laurel crown. 
 Around, Roman soldiers, chariots, and horses, 
 triumphant men, a beautiful woman with the 
 horn of Plenty, and happy children. 
 
 Below, the vanquished, prostrate, half- 
 crushed, under yokes, dragged by the hair, 
 fettered, seeking to hide their faces in clasped 
 hands. No appeal to Caesar for them, nothing 
 but to be trampled under his feet. To the 
 vanquished Woe ! 
 
 The boy turned away. 
 
 He never forgot that this Woe reached 
 down to slavery, and to the possibility of the 
 death of the Cross. 
 
 " No appeal for us to this god !" he mur- 
 mured at length. " But in our north, Herman 
 the Deliverer lives still. Our gods dwell in 
 the north and look southward. When we 
 pray we turn to the north." 
 
 And he resumed his work at the metals 
 with redoubled purpose. 
 
 The old man understood, but did not re- 
 monstrate. It was some time before either 
 spoke again. Siward was earnestly bending 
 over his work, so earnestly that he did not 
 observe a soft footstep approach the door, un- 
 til something of unusual light fell on him, and
 
 120 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 looking up suddenly he saw a young maiden 
 standing before him. She stood, erect and 
 radiant, entirely clothed in white, in marked 
 contrast to the languishing, jewelled, per- 
 fumed women of her time. Not an ornament 
 nor a jewel drew the eye from the stately 
 grace of her figure or the delicate beauty of 
 her face. There was no color about her, ex- 
 cept the golden glow on the brown hair and 
 the soft flush of youth on the cheek, no sparkle 
 except the beaming of her eyes, when at rare 
 moments the long lashes were raised and she 
 looked up. 
 
 Yet it seemed as if her presence brought 
 the light of the open heavens into the dark 
 workshop. The whiteness of her stole was not 
 like any whiteness he had seen on earth, Si- 
 ward thought. It was like the radiance of 
 clouds in the clearest moonlight, or of swans 
 basking in the sunshine among the green 
 shadows of a river. And so, with her move- 
 ments. Like a cloud or a swan, she had float- 
 ed on his sight. 
 
 Instinctively he laid down his tools, as if in 
 an imperial presence, and stood before her, 
 but with eyes that did not venture to seek 
 hers. He stood bathed in a heavenly light. 
 Until she spoke ; and the tones of the sweet, 
 girlish voice seemed to wake him out of one 
 bright dream into another. At first he com-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. I2 i 
 
 prehended nothing but the music of the tones. 
 The}' were music music such as he had nev- 
 er heard before. He no more thought of 
 words than if he had been listening to some 
 far-off melody of flutes across the waters, until 
 old Laon's voice broke in on the vision. 
 
 She was speaking ; and speaking of him. 
 
 " Clcelia the Vestal has come hither," Laon 
 said, "to thank thee for rescuing Clcelia Dio- 
 dora, her sister." 
 
 " Can I do anything for thee ? thou hast 
 done well and bravely for us," she said, with 
 a simple kindness. " The Vestals have some 
 rights and special privileges. If by chance 
 we meet a criminal on his way to execution, 
 we can demand his pardon." 
 
 A great rush of hope came into the captive 
 boy's heart, and brought the power of man- 
 hood into his face. He raised his eyes, looked 
 proudly into the pure, sweet face, and said, 
 calmly, 
 
 " I am no criminal. I am no captive cap- 
 tured in fair fight. We were betrayed. We 
 were born free. But, now, I am a slave in 
 the household of Csesar Germanicus." 
 
 A cloud pased over her countenance. 
 
 " The house of the Caesars is above all laws 
 and rights," she said. " Would it had been 
 any one else !" 
 
 She stood with clasped hands, mournfully 
 6
 
 122 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 cast down. He would have given much to 
 recall his words, and brink back the radiance 
 to her face. At length he ventured to speak. 
 
 " Let not my evil chance darken thy heart, 
 lady," he said. " Others have won back free- 
 dom : and so will I, for me and mine. Liberty 
 is better conquered than given." 
 
 She looked up, and her face shone once 
 more. There was a will in his words which 
 made them prophetic. 
 
 " Brave words," she said, and true. If I 
 can do anything to set thee free, I will. If not, 
 thou wilt do it ; and that will be better for 
 thee." 
 
 And with a smile, which to him was like a 
 sacred augury of victory, she went out of the 
 workshop ; and he watched her glide, under 
 the shadow of the balconies, down the narrow 
 crowded lane. The way was made for her, 
 he thought, among the throng, not by the lie- 
 tor, but by her own beauty. She passed 
 through the throng like a sunbeam. 
 
 Siward returned to his work, and lelt as if 
 it had been consecrated by incense and sacri- 
 fice. It was not till after a long silence that 
 he said, 
 
 " Laon, she is no worshiper of Tiberius Cae- 
 sar, nor of the Mint goddess." 
 
 "No," said the old man; "she lives in a 
 lovely vision herself the loveliest part of it.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^3 
 
 Her religion is the religion of old Rome. Day 
 and night she guards the Sacred Fire for her 
 country, for Rome ; and knows not that the 
 Rome she spends her life for lives no more. 
 The fire burns on the altar ; but the divinity, 
 the Patria, for whose sake it burns, is dust 
 and ashes !" 
 
 So the weeks and months passed on for Si- 
 ward. Not slowly, or altogether sadly. He 
 felt each day the bracing sense of power gain- 
 ed ; gained for what to him were the noblest 
 ends. And meanwhile he was gaining uncon- 
 sciously other powers higher than he could 
 estimate. Stores of wisdom from the old civ- 
 ilization were penetrating his mind through 
 the words of old Laon. 
 
 He was still in the dawn. Continually new 
 fields of fact and thought were opening on 
 him. Every day the world grew larger and 
 wider to him, as the past of Greece and Rome 
 and of the old kingdoms of the world came 
 into the light before him. 
 
 Yet still he stood before the threshold of a 
 home. The sacred world lay still for him in 
 the home behind him, to which he meant to 
 return, with his mother and his sister, and 
 make it beautiful with all the treasures of 
 those new worlds. 
 
 Clcelia Diodora often came and sat in the lit- 
 tle room behind the shop and listened to the
 
 124 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 talk of the two in the workshop. And some- 
 times she sang, in her rich southern voice, 
 lays and legends of old Rome. 
 
 He liked to listen. But no such magic 
 came with the poor child's tones to his heart 
 as with the slightest murmur of Clcelia the 
 Vestal. 
 
 Only to the old man the poor deformed 
 child remained dearest of all. Sometimes he 
 would lay her small delicate hand on his fore- 
 head, with an Oriental sign of homage, and 
 say, 
 
 " Diodora, my god-given, thou and I are in 
 disguise here. Princely, but no one knows 
 us. What matters it? Does not our wise 
 man say we are in prison here? Have we 
 not heard a song few understand, and under- 
 stood ? But I too," he repeated, quoting 
 words well known to them both, " ' consider 
 myself a fellow-servant of the swans, and sa- 
 cred to the same god, who, when they must 
 die, though they have been use* to sing be- 
 fore, sing then more than ever.' Read to me 
 the dying song of that swan-like soul of our 
 old Athens." 
 
 He had taught her the rare accomplishment 
 for a girl of reading. And of all reading, 
 he liked best to listen to the Phcedo in her 
 girlish tones, how "justice and goodness and 
 beauty are something, and really exist ;" and
 
 VICTOR Y OF THE VANQUISHED. 125 
 
 " the soul, which is invisible, from the prison 
 of the body goes to another place like itself 
 excellent, pure, and invisible." 
 
 " That barbarian lad is brave and true, and 
 loves to learn," he said ; but we have to lead 
 him a little further before he can understand 
 our swan's singing 1 ." 
 
 But on the heart of Clcelia the Vestal the 
 shadows fell more frequently. She tried, but 
 could not effect Siward's liberation. As she 
 fed the fires in the Temple, the irremediable 
 sorrows around her, of Cloelia her suffering 
 sister, and of Siward the slave, and through 
 them of the great suffering world, pressed 
 closer and more heavily on her heart. 
 
 And with these, from time to time, came 
 rumors of the wickedness of the city ; a sti- 
 fling fear that the Rome whose sacred hearth- 
 fire she kept was not the free-born Rome of 
 old, but something very different more like 
 the city in the Apotheosis of Augustus, with 
 stony stateliness trampling the oppressed 
 world under her feet. 
 
 And with this fear, now and then, came 
 lovely, innocent dreams of some hearth she 
 might have kept bright and pure, and made a 
 source of light and joy. 
 
 Every evening Siward passed by the palace 
 of Tiberius Caesar on the Palatine, and thought
 
 126 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of the picture of the divine government of 
 Augustus with a defiant heart. 
 
 " God of this wicked, cruel, idle, mocking 
 Rome," he thought ; " but not of us, the sons 
 of the North. For us lives Herman the De- 
 liverer." 
 
 With this hope in him, the sarcasms of his 
 fellow-slaves fell harmlessly. And with a 
 strong, light heart he went on to learn how 
 to fashion the liberating sword. 
 
 In many ways he was right. 
 
 All power in heaven and on earth was in- 
 deed not given to Tiberius Cassar. 
 
 One universal Empire was at hand ; but it 
 was not his. 
 
 The Deliverer who could unbind the many 
 burdens and bid the oppressed go free, was 
 indeed on earth. 
 
 But it was not Herman. 
 
 The King who was to demand and receive 
 the homage of the world, and overthrow the 
 palace of the Palatine and the images of the 
 Capitoline, through many patient years to 
 come, was consecrating and ennobling the 
 labor of the humblest workshop in the Su- 
 burra or the Velabrum. 
 
 The kingdom of God was at hand. 
 
 But its foundations were being laid in the 
 carpenter's workshop at Nazareth.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HAT fine fortune has the New 
 Year brought thee ?" said old 
 Laon, looking from his work as 
 Siward entered the workshop on 
 New Year's Day, his honest face radiant with 
 life and hope. " You look indeed like one of 
 your happy Hyperboreans. Make the most 
 of to-day by all means. Tiberius Cassar has 
 forbidden the New Year's presents to be con- 
 tinued beyond to-day. Boy, have they been 
 making thee glad with honey-cakes, and figs, 
 and dates ; or what good news has cheered 
 thee ?" 
 
 " Nothing, but that Cassar Germanicus is 
 to leave this idle, miserable Rome for his gov- 
 ernment in the East, and we go with him." 
 
 " Are thy happy fields then in the East ? 
 Ours were in the West, or beyond the North 
 Wind. But, indeed, it matters little where. 
 Anywhere but where we have been, or where 
 we are." 
 
 (127)
 
 128 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " We are going first to thy Greece, Laon," 
 said Siward. 
 
 " To my Greece ? My Greece died and was 
 buried long years ago ; or rather was not bu- 
 ried, which is worse. Dost thou not know 
 that nations, like ourselves, die a thousand 
 times before they are said to die. First the 
 child dies, then the boy, then the man. At 
 last old age must die, and with it we our- 
 selves. So with Greece. First the gods died 
 that is, passed among the shades then the 
 heroes, then the men. Dost thou think to 
 find Apolla in Greece, or Achilles, or the he- 
 roes of Thermopylae, or the wise men of the 
 Grove, of the Porch, or of the Garden, that 
 thou rejoicest thus to quit old Laon and his 
 workshop in the Suburra ? As glad to go as 
 to come. Like the rest, like the rest !" 
 
 Siward's countenance fell. He said little 
 in reply, but settled down quietly to his work, 
 knowing well by this time that the way to 
 quiet his old friend's temper when ruffled was 
 to let him have his grumble out. Moreover, 
 when he put them to himself, he found Laon's 
 questions rather unanswerable. It was not 
 clear what good he expected from the change. 
 A slave in the Palatine, he would be equally 
 a slave in the Acropolis or on the Mediter- 
 ranean. It was only clear that it would be a 
 relief to escape from this Rome. This, and
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 a vague hope of learning something which 
 might bring him nearer freedom and Her- 
 man, were what had made him glad. 
 
 Old Laon did not recover all that day, and 
 dismissed the boy early. 
 
 But the next morning, when Siward en- 
 tered the workshop, he was greeted with a 
 grim smile. 
 
 " I also am going to the East with Caesar 
 Germanicus," Laon said. " Not so easy to 
 escape an old tyrant like me. Clcelius Tul- 
 lus has let me to young Caesar, to be one of 
 the armorers of the expedition. It will bring 
 my master a good sum, and at the end I am 
 to have my freedom, and perhaps may do 
 something for thee and for others. At An- 
 tioch I had some who knew me once. Who 
 knows but we might have a workshop there 
 together, in Antioch, the third city in the 
 world (for beauty, the first) and find thee 
 there a bright-eyed Syrian bride ?" 
 
 This was very far from the goal of Siward's 
 ambition. To him every stroke of work was 
 a step on the way to Herman, to the pine 
 forests, where smith was a title of honor, and 
 the hammer and anvil would be as much 
 needed and as much esteemed as the spear 
 or the sword in the liberation of his people. 
 
 He had thought Laon understood this ; but 
 now the old man's kindly dreams of an old 
 6*
 
 1 30 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 age in Syria, to which he was to be as a son, 
 fell painfully on him, and he worked on si- 
 lently with a feeling of one who was purchas- 
 ing a treasure by false coin. 
 
 Laon's talk meantime flowed far away into 
 fond descriptions of Antioch as he remem- 
 bered it in his childhood, before he was or- 
 phaned and sold to pay his father's debts. 
 The long sweep of the Orontes winding un- 
 der the hills ; the colonnades traversing the 
 city ; the groves on the hill-sides, with their 
 temples, and fountains, and statues ; the 
 strange blending of nations not crushed into 
 monotony by the overpowering presence of 
 the metropolis and the emperor, as at Rome, 
 but free to develop in the most vivid colors 
 and in the richest forms all varieties of life 
 Syrians, Greeks, Jews, Egyptians, not stiffened 
 Latins, but all equally at home and luxuriat- 
 ing in that wilderness of beauty. On all this, 
 glowing with the sunshine of childhood, con- 
 trasted with the monotonous years of drudg- 
 ery along the gloomy paths between, and yet 
 to be lit up with the after glow of a freedom 
 not altogether too late restored, the old man 
 dwelt, until Siward's honesty could stand it 
 no longer, and with northern abruptness all 
 the more abrupt because of the pain of giving 
 pain he exclaimed, 
 
 " Laon,.this city of pleasures is no home for
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 131 
 
 me. I have a mother and a young sister to 
 guard ; perchance a father, in the North ; 
 certainly a country. If ever I am free, and 
 can do anything worth doing, I am free for 
 Germany, to work and fight for Herman and 
 the children of my people." 
 
 To his surprise, the old man betrayed no 
 distress or displeasure. He only said, in the 
 words of a wise man of old, 
 
 " ' We step into the same rivers, and we do not 
 step into them' You think Germany is the 
 Germany you left. I, foolish old man, have 
 been thinking of Antioch as the Antioch I 
 left. You of yourself as the boy made cap- 
 tive on the Rhine. I of myself as the child 
 that wove garlands on the Orontes. It mat- 
 ters not. Let both keep their dreams. The 
 Rhine and the Orontes are flowing still have 
 been flowing all the time. Time will show 
 which tide is the strongest." 
 
 But when Clcelia Diodora heard of the pro- 
 posed departure, the little color in her pale 
 face forsook it altogether. 
 
 All the quiet hidden hours in the little dark 
 room over ; the sweet peaceful hours, out of 
 sight of every one, and within hearing of 
 the old man's talk, and of those wild north- 
 ern sagas of Siward's which had bordered 
 her world with a forest-land of mystery ; the 
 singing of the old Latin lays to those two
 
 1 32 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 who loved to listen ; the readings in the wise 
 books of old ! 
 
 Moreover, between Clcelia and Siguna had 
 been growing- a quiet strong affection. Si- 
 guna, the homely, imaginative German moth- 
 er, had been less repelled than the people of 
 the sunny artistic South by her deformity. 
 
 The Gothic poetry, with its humor and its 
 pathos, with its power of interweaving the 
 grotesque and quaint into its grandeur and 
 beauty, lay hidden in her heart. She had a 
 way of thinking of the poor girl with her 
 dark, wistful eyes and her shrunken face, as 
 of one of the ^Esir disguised for some mys- 
 terious purpose. Sometimes she would say 
 to Siward, 
 
 " Those eyes are the only part of Clcelia 
 Diodora that really belong to her. All the 
 rest is a mask." 
 
 Little Hilda also had found out the treas- 
 ures of imagery and legend in Clcelia, and 
 would sit listening to her enrapt for hours ; 
 so that between the captive mother and child 
 and the maiden captive in the poor crippled 
 frame with a life-long captivity a strong 
 triple bond had been woven. 
 
 And now as Laon told her of Antioch, and 
 how all this was to be rent away from her, she 
 sat pale and speechless, with clasped hands. 
 
 " Child," said the old man " Diodora, my
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^3 
 
 god-given I am going for thy sake. I am 
 going to earn freedom, perchance to make a 
 home for thee. Thy parents will find some 
 one to adopt, and then may be will spare thee 
 once more to the old man who thought thee 
 worth saving of old." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " The sea !" she cried : " storms, shipwrecks, 
 perils of strange lands, of robbers, of pirates !" 
 
 " Child," he said, trying to smile, " there are 
 no pirates now. Have I not told thee how 
 the great Pompey swept the seas clear of 
 them more than half a century since ! Roads 
 through all the world, pirates swept from the 
 seas. Thy countrymen have done their work 
 well in making journeying safe. If only they 
 had better ends to journey for. Thou wouldst 
 not fear these perils for thyself?" 
 
 " For myself, no," she said. " What worse 
 have I to fear, for myself?" Then kindling 
 with the enthusiasm which always lay deep 
 within her 
 
 "You are going," she said, "and going to 
 Athens ! To the fields where the bravest men 
 fight and the sweetest singers sang, and the 
 olive-groves where Plato taught and listened 
 to Socrates ; perhaps to the sea-shore where 
 Thetis came up and with soft hands soothed 
 her son, grieving from the height of her di- 
 vine deathlessness that he should suffer
 
 134 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 he who knew his life was but for a little 
 while !" 
 
 " We shall not hear them, child !" said the 
 old man. Then looking fondly at her, he 
 added, " Thou perchance mightest !" 
 
 " Laon," she said, suddenly, " by the Foun- 
 tain of Egeria dwell a people of a strange 
 Eastern race. I was sitting at our garden- 
 door the other day when one of them, a ven- 
 erable gray-headed old man, was resting on 
 the slopes outside. He told me a strange 
 story of One they are looking for have been 
 looking for more than thousands of years a 
 King, to set all the wrongs of the world right. 
 They have been waiting for Him a thousand 
 years ; but the strange thing is, now they feel 
 sure He is near." 
 
 The old man smiled with a mournful con- 
 tempt. 
 
 " Only a Jew !" he said. " Who heeds what 
 the Jews say? A race of misanthropes and 
 money-lenders." 
 
 " Some noble matrons have learned to wor- 
 ship with them," she replied. " So the old 
 man said." 
 
 Laon looked in alarm into the girl's face. 
 
 " Do not fear for me," she said, answering 
 his look. " His words only made me think 
 of the Bound Prometheus, of lo wandering 
 hither and thither in wanderings without rest,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 135 
 
 and of the promise of a Deliverer to be born 
 of her." 
 
 " Take heed, child," said the old man 
 " take heed. Some women are wicked some 
 Roman women have great burdens of crime 
 on their souls and therefore are superstitious. 
 Many women have a great burden of sorrow, 
 and therefore are superstitious. And all 
 women have a dangerous longing for happi- 
 ness, and are therefore superstitious. But 
 thee, all the wisdom I have taught thee to 
 love will guard from such delusions from 
 the degradation of becoming a prey to some 
 base superstition or dark magic of Egypt or 
 Syria! Thou hast walked too much in the 
 daylight beneath the Porch and in the Grove 
 to choose these damp and noisome caves." 
 
 "Stay and guard me then, Laon," she said, 
 smiling ; " or come quickly back. It was only 
 your words that made me think again of the 
 Jew. I wondered (it may have been a foolish 
 thought) whether all these great Roads you 
 spoke of have been made straight, and all the 
 ways of the Great Sea have been swept clear, 
 for some Great One, some Deliverer. The 
 world seems to me so very restless and sad, 
 wandering hither and thither, like lo, seeking 
 rest and finding none. It came into my mind 
 whether some Deliverer might be near. There 
 are so many who suffer ; but until that Jew
 
 136 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 spoke, I do not remember to have met with 
 any who had such a hope. And then it flash- 
 ed on me, what if you should come on traces 
 of the Deliverer in the wonderful, mystical 
 old East? The Son of lo, who was to deliver 
 the Titan from the rock to which he was 
 bound and from the eagle tearing his heart, 
 was to come out of Egypt ! And this proph- 
 ecy of the old Jew it does seem strange!" 
 
 " Not strange at all," said the old man, 
 sharply. " The legend of lo has been mixed 
 with other Egyptian legends of Isis, and with 
 the Apis worship. And the Jews were a race 
 of slaves who escaped from Egypt. Born 
 slaves, they had no golden age in the past, 
 and so they made it in the future. Not strange 
 at all, Diodora not strange at all." 
 
 But Siward listened, as he went silently 
 on with his work, and wondered, pondering 
 many things in his mind.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HEY left the city by the Appian 
 Way, bordered by its miles of tombs 
 Siguna, Siward, and the child Hil- 
 da, among the other slaves of Ger- 
 manicus. Only a few months before, they had 
 entered Rome as an unknown region of en- 
 chantment. They left the mistress of the 
 world with no diminished faith in her witch- 
 eries, but with a terrible knowledge out of 
 what elements her cup of enchantments was 
 mixed. 
 
 As the lines of temples which crowned her 
 hills faded from their eyes, Siward thought 
 how Laon had said that the Romans had but 
 one god that all those temples where men 
 burned incense to legendary divinities or to 
 personifications of virtues were, in fact, but 
 porticoes of the true temple, the Palace on 
 the Palatine, whence Tiberius Cassar sent his 
 ravens into every home, to bring him tidings 
 of men's words and deeds. 
 
 (137)
 
 1 38 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Yet the hearts of the German captives were 
 less bitter than when, on that May day in the 
 past year, on the Flaminian Way, they had 
 trodden the last weary steps of the Great 
 Northern Road. 
 
 Siguna's thoughts went fondly back to one 
 patrician house on the Ccelian, where she 
 and her child were" at that hour missed and 
 mourned by as sorrowful and lonely a heart 
 as any among the countless bands of captives 
 throughout the world. 
 
 And in Siward's heart at least one pure vi- 
 sion remained ; one sweet maidenly form, one 
 pure hallowing presence, beautiful within and 
 without, was enshrined in his inmost thoughts. 
 Far indeed above him as the Norna maidens, 
 Cloelia Pulchra the Vestal, like a Norn her- 
 self, secretly poured the waters from the liv*- 
 ing wells, not only on the shrine of Vesta, but 
 around the roots of the young German's Tree 
 of life. He saw her always as she shone on 
 him first in her white stole, without a jewel 
 or a decoration, lighting up the drudgery of 
 his daily work with her bright presence, and 
 gladdening it by the music of her voice. 
 
 He heard her say, " Thou hast done well 
 and bravely !" and her words crowned him 
 better than any wreath or laurel. He heard 
 her say, " If I can set thee free, I will. If not, 
 thou wilt do it. And that will be better for
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 139 
 
 thee. ' And her words were to him as the 
 oracle of a priestess or the prophecy of a Teu- 
 ton Wala. She had said it, and he would do 
 it. How could he fail? 
 
 Before they had gone far from the city, they 
 overtook old Laon limping slowly along, and 
 in no amiable mood. 
 
 Yet old Laon also had done more to ward 
 off the poison drops than Siward knew, grate- 
 ful as he was to the old man. 
 
 For always in the midst of the works of 
 destruction, the crimes and the avengings, the 
 droppings of the serpent's venom, which make 
 so large a portion of history, we may be sure 
 He who has never ceased to care for man has 
 had His silent ministers patiently warding off 
 the poison. Little acts of kindness, little in- 
 terchanges of human pity and goodwill have 
 never ceased, voices far too gentle and low 
 for history to hear, but without which the 
 world must long since have come to a point 
 where history would have had nothing to re- 
 cord, and human life would have become a 
 mere brute-like monotonous round of fighting 
 and feeding, or as a chaos of demons. 
 
 Once only, as they went along .the road to 
 the coast, did all the old bitterness come back 
 to Sivvard's heart. 
 
 He was walking beside his mother one
 
 140 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 evening, carrying a heavy burden, when on 
 the slope of an opposite hill he suddenly per- 
 ceived two Crosses standing out black against 
 the sunset. Whether the forms on them were 
 living or dead, at that distance could not be 
 seen. 
 
 He stood between his mother and the terri- 
 ble sight, and, trusting she had not seen it, 
 endeavored to stand as erect as he could be- 
 neath his burden, and to interest her in other 
 thoughts. 
 
 But glancing anxiously at her, he met her 
 eyes, and from the horror in them he per- 
 ceived that she had seen but too plaihly, and 
 knew what the sight meant. 
 
 They made no further attempt at speech 
 that evening, but walked behind each other 
 in unbroken silence. 
 
 Lives like those of Germanicus and Agrip- 
 pina make little echo. We should have known 
 little of their pure and pleasant life together 
 but for the tragedy which borders and breaks 
 it, making a highway for the tread of history, 
 as the burning deserts make a highway for 
 the feet of the Bedouin into the pleasant pas- 
 tures of the Holy Land. 
 
 The young Csesar and his wife were doubt- 
 less as glad as any of their train to escape the 
 oppressive presence of Tiberius and the Em- 
 press-mother.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 141 
 
 There must have been refreshment for the 
 young conqueror of the North, even in the 
 storms which his ships encountered on the 
 Ionian sea. Once more he had to wage open 
 war, now with the winds and waves of the 
 Adriatic, as lately with the wild Northern 
 Seas* and the wilder tribes which dwelt on 
 their shores. The stifling atmosphere of the 
 Imperial court was left behind. The grand- 
 son of Octavia and the grand-daughter of 
 Octavius could breathe freely by the coast of 
 that Actium where Octavius had defeated 
 Antony before Livia was Empress or her son 
 Tiberius had the most distant prospect of the 
 throne. 
 
 Yet this journey was to Germanicus a vir- 
 tual exile, a banishment from the work he 
 had aspired to do for Rome, and the men he 
 had trained to do it. New enemies, new 
 comrades, new difficulties and dangers lay 
 before him. One thing only remained un- 
 changed. 
 
 The suspicions of Tiberius, the " envy of 
 the god" of the Romans, followed him unre- 
 lentingly everywhere. His friend Silenus 
 had been purposely removed from the gov- 
 ernment of Syria, and an unscrupulous, am- 
 bitious man of the great old Calpurnian house, 
 Cneius Piso, appointed to dog his footsteps 
 and thwart his plans wherever he went.
 
 142 VICTORY OF TUTS VANQUISHED. 
 
 It was by no accident that an associate was 
 given to the young Caesar who from the first 
 undisguisedly disobeyed his orders and mis- 
 interpreted his acts, and whose wife Plancina, 
 a favorite of the Empress-mother, lost no op- 
 portunity of arrogantly defying and insulting 
 Agrippina. 
 
 Tiberius ventured to rely much on the 
 fidelity to duty and the evenness of temper 
 to be expected from Germanicus. 
 
 It was believed by many that he relied on 
 Piso and Plancina for darker services than 
 could be confessed ; and that in neither re- 
 liance was he disappointed.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 T length the storms of the Ionian Sea 
 had been mastered, and the ships of 
 Germanicus were tranquilly at an- 
 chor in the Piraeus, with the brazen 
 statue of the guardian Athena flashing on 
 their sight from the summit of the Acropolis. 
 To Germanicus the past memories of the 
 place were as sacred as to any of its citizens, 
 and he chose to waive as much as possible of 
 the state of the Caesar, and to approach the 
 ancient free city reverently, not as, a cen- 
 tury before, Sulla had entered, with a con- 
 quering army, battering down her Long 
 Walls and their towers, but as a pilgrim to 
 her shrines, and a disciple of her philosophic 
 schools, attended by one tutor. 
 
 In that century Rome had passed as much 
 under the intellectual rule of Athens, as 
 Athens under the Imperial rule of Rome. 
 And along the road from the Piraeus to the 
 city, between the walls and towers which Sul- 
 
 (143)
 
 144 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 la had reduced to ruins, Caesar Germanicus 
 passed reverently to the judgment-seat where 
 Demosthenes had uttered models of oratory 
 for Roman orators, to the Painted Porch 
 whose masculine philosophy had power to 
 revive something of the spirit of old republi- 
 can Rome in the degenerate Romans of the 
 Empire, to the theatres once crowded with 
 audiences which could appreciate yEschylus, 
 to the temples where the Zeus and the 
 Athena of Phidias, and of Olympus, dwarfed 
 the Capitoline Jove to a mere tribal divinity 
 of yesterday ; yet where beside the altars of 
 the Olympians incense was burned by the 
 Athenians to " the goddess Rome," and to 
 Augustus, .the brother of his grandmother 
 Octavia. 
 
 All Athens poured out along the roads and 
 on the quays to do honor and give welcome 
 to the adopted grandson of the divine Augus- 
 tus, and " to represent to him the glories of 
 Athens." But the most sensitive Roman 
 vanity could scarcely have been wounded by 
 the loftiest Athenian glorification of the Acro- 
 polis, now that the Acropolis had become a 
 pedestal for Csesar. 
 
 Old Laon was in a tremor of suppressed 
 enthusiasm as they approached the glorious 
 shores.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 145 
 
 When he caught sight of the statue of 
 Athena, he seized Siward's arm and said, 
 " Boy, that statue is made of the brazen spoils 
 of Marathon. No Persian could look at that 
 for centuries without having flashed in his 
 eyes the victory and freedom of Greece." 
 
 " Athens is free now ?" asked the boy. 
 
 " Free ! yes, a freed slave ! Free, as I shall 
 be a freed man when I have worked out this 
 expedition," said the old man bitterly. " Suf- 
 fered to be free. But that old freedom, wrung 
 from a mighty foe, was worth having," he ad- 
 ded ; " worth the three hundred lives freely 
 sacrificed for it in the dark cleft among the 
 hills. It meant, Herodotus, and ^Eschylus, 
 and Phidias, and Socrates, and Plato, and 
 Demosthenes ; the Academy, the Lyceum, the 
 Garden, the Porch. That was a liberty worth 
 conquering. It was no mere liberty," he con- 
 cluded grimly, " to hunt boars, and build 
 huts, and roam as free as wild beasts in the 
 forests." 
 
 Siward flushed slightly at the implied con- 
 trast. He had been thinking of the spoils of 
 the legions of Varus, and of Herman the De- 
 liverer, in the Teutoberger Forest, and won- 
 dering when trophies would be reared of 
 these, and he felt abashed. But in a few min- 
 utes he took courage and said, " The free- 
 dom came first, Laon, and then the wisdom 
 and the glory ; did it not ?"
 
 146 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " The cities worth keeping free, and the 
 men who conquered the freedom, and in 
 whose souls the wisdom sprang, came first," 
 said Laon. " The ages have scarcely a second 
 harvest like that. The old soil is worn out, the 
 crops degenerate and grow feebler year by 
 year. If you have yet virgin soil in your 
 North, where will you find a Sower to sow 
 new seed ?" 
 
 The ship neared the quay. In a few mo- 
 ments came the shock of touching the shore, 
 and all the turmoil of landing amongst the 
 Athenians, eager to see and to hear some new 
 thing. In the confusion the German captives, 
 having to take their share of the work, were 
 separated from Laon. 
 
 It was not until some hours afterwards that 
 Siward overtook the old man limping along 
 the muddy road from the Piraeus. 
 
 His philosophy was sorely tried by the dif- 
 ficulties of the way. 
 
 " Those Romans have, after all, their use in 
 the world," he muttered. " I always said so. 
 They made unexceptionable roads and drains." 
 
 At that moment a young Greek came up 
 to Laon and gave him a cordial welcome. 
 " Do you not remember me," he said " Cal- 
 lias, the son of Damaris ? I am here studying 
 for my statues." 
 
 " Statues are all very well, my excellent 
 Callias," said Laon, struggling out of a mud-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^7 
 
 hole into which he had plunged in the sur- 
 prise of the meeting. " But is it possible that 
 Pericles and Phidias and Pluto, and all the 
 wise men and artists, plunged through all 
 this filth ? That Socrates, for instance, tran- 
 quilly pursued his divine discourses, uninter- 
 rupted and unmoved by being plunged at 
 every second breath into these mud rivers ?" 
 
 " Possibly Socrates walked and talked after 
 fine weather," said Callias, in a tone which 
 implied that the difficulties and discourses of 
 Socrates were not of prime moment to him. 
 He would doubtless have echoed the senti- 
 ment that " to be the living slave even of a 
 needy master was better than to be lord over 
 all the dead." 
 
 " Your mother told me you were in Syria." 
 
 " So I was. I came to make statues for 
 Herod Antipas, for what they call his Golden 
 House, in his new city of Tiberias." 
 
 " You scarcely needed to study after Phid- 
 ias to meet the taste of a Jew !" said Laon, 
 contemptuously. 
 
 " I need it to meet my own," said Callias. 
 " Besides, the Herods are great builders, and 
 have people around them who can tell them 
 what they ought to admire. But I should 
 scarcely need to copy Phidias, if I could have 
 such models as I have seen on the quay of the 
 Piraeus to-day."
 
 1 48 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " What ! have the Olympians descended 
 for thee also?" said Laon, smiling. 
 
 " Scarcely Olympians. Happy Hyperbo- 
 reans, perhaps. One a tall, majestic, matronlj 
 Avoman, with a step stately enough, eyes soft 
 enough, and a brow grand and calm enough 
 for Juno. Another a child, who in a year or 
 two will be the perfection of a Hebe fair, 
 with color in her cheeks like the tips of a 
 shell, and teeth like the pearly inside ; eyes 
 blue like the sea, and hair that made a sun- 
 shine around her face. Mother and child, 
 they seemed, simply dressed, yet well, like 
 slaves of some great house." 
 
 Siward listened eagerly. With his imper- 
 fect knowledge of the Greek which they were 
 speaking, he half caught the meaning, when 
 Laon addressed him, 
 
 " Callias is speaking of your mother and 
 sister." 
 
 The young sculptor took a long look at Si- 
 ward. 
 
 " I see ! You must be of the same race," he 
 said. " Let me model you in a group. I can 
 pay well for models," he added softly to Laon, 
 apart. 
 
 " We are slaves," said Siward, proudly. " I 
 suppose the very reflection and image of us 
 is not ours to sell ! And if it were we would 
 not sell it."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " Nay, for that matter," said the young ar- 
 tist ; " we are all slaves ; we are all bought 
 and sold. Only some have the advantage of 
 putting their price into their own purse. Our 
 forefathers created statues to make their old 
 city beautiful, and saw them live in thousands 
 of adoring eyes. I sell them to a barbarian 
 prince, who values them by the cost of their 
 marble, and the praise of his courtiers, among 
 a people who, if they dared, would grind 
 them to powder, and make me drink them in 
 water, as their ancestors did." 
 
 " But you make the statues ! " said Siward ; 
 " and if I were a sculptor, that is what I would 
 like best. No one can rob you of that." 
 
 The sculptor turned towards the boy with 
 a penetrating glance. 
 
 " True !" he said, in a more serious tone. 
 "A little of that I understand. But you have 
 been born at the wrong time, if you mean to 
 live by that rule." 
 
 " Our friend comes from the North," inter- 
 posed Laon, " where the world is still young." 
 
 " The family look like it," said Callias. 
 " Such types belong only to pristine days." 
 
 " This boy interests me," he added to Laon 
 in rapid Greek. " Can it be that the soul is 
 like the body beautiful, vigorous, and sim- 
 ple? Is there indeed a race like this ? Then 
 the Olympians may look to their thrones. I
 
 150 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 would fain see more of such a family. It is 
 like bathing in a pure mountain river to 
 breathe their presence. Are the mother and 
 sister the same?" 
 
 " As pure and beautiful within and with- 
 out," said Laon. 
 
 " Then, for old acquaintance' sake, bring 
 me to know them ! A bride from such a 
 stock would be a perpetual fountain of 
 youth.' 
 
 " You talk of renewing youth, boy ! You 
 have scarce begun your youth." 
 
 " Do you not know ? No one is young 
 now." He spoke lightly. But a shade of 
 unfeigned melancholy came over the mobile 
 countenance, and took the light of the keen 
 dark eyes. " Long since the gods, and Youth 
 among them, have been banished among the 
 shades. And, in revenge, they have taken 
 the sunshine and solidity from earth, and 
 have made mere shadows of us all." 
 
 " Wisdom remains," said Laon, severely. 
 
 " Yes, philosophy remains," replied the 
 young artist, bitterly, " the most shadowy 
 shade of us all. She wanders, mumbling old 
 saws, from the Lyceum to the Academy, from 
 the Porch to the Garden, only in earnest 
 when she wakes to fight over some old battle, 
 or when she whispers to the initiated her last 
 secret, that, not only are there no gods, and
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 151 
 
 no Patria, there is no truth, at least none dis- 
 cernible for man." 
 
 As they talked, slow as their progress was, 
 they had, nevertheless, approached the City. 
 
 The glorious Acropolis, itself one great 
 Temple with a hundred shrines, of which 
 Greece was the platform, and the world the 
 outer court, rose above them. 
 
 They went on through the City ; through 
 the Agora, where the free people of old had 
 met. But now, among its hosts of beautiful 
 statues, lounged listlessly the idle throngs of 
 a degraded populace, pestering the new-com- 
 ers for alms or traffic. 
 
 Laon turned round in disgust. 
 
 " Come again to-night," he said to Callias, 
 " when these chattering ghosts of old Athens 
 are laid. Then we shall see the real Athens 
 the only Athens that will ever live any 
 more. Meet us here, Siward," he added, 
 suddenly ; " here by the Altar of Pity. After 
 all," he added, " it is the only Altar to Pity in 
 the world. Siward, to-night we will come 
 back to it, and you shall see our Athens. 
 Bring your mother and the child, if you can. 
 I suspect if there is another Altar to Pity in 
 the world, it is in thy mother's heart."
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 HEN, that evening, old Laon led Si- 
 guna and the child Hilda to the Al- 
 tar of Pity, by a sudden impulse she 
 knelt and embraced the stone, and 
 laid the soft cheek of the child against it. 
 
 "There is no Altar to Pity in Rome !" she 
 said softly, as if to herself, as she arose. 
 
 " But in Athens," said the young Athenian 
 sculptor, proudly, " there are no Crosses and 
 no gladiatorial games. The two could not 
 have the freedom of one city." 
 
 Siguna looked gratefully into his face. 
 
 " The young sculptor wished to see you," 
 said Laon. " His mother Damaris you know. 
 He himself is free ; lives often at Antioch ; 
 and may be of service to you in the strange 
 land, if the Cassar remains there, and I must 
 return to Rome." 
 
 He wished to say more. But Siguna was 
 not a woman to whom it was easy to pay 
 compliments. If indirect, she would scarcely
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^3 
 
 have perceived them ; if direct, she would 
 either have not heeded or have resented them. 
 Laon was, moreover, not clear as to what the 
 German theories might be as to models. 
 More than one custom which was not ques- 
 tioned at Rome nor by Socrates, he had 
 found the German boy regard with horror as 
 a crime. Having, therefore, so far accom- 
 plished the desired introduction, after a few 
 minutes of. further conversation he suffered 
 Siguna and the child to go back to the house 
 of Germanicus, whilst he and Callias and Si- 
 ward pursued their way about the City. 
 
 " Now you must manage your own affairs," 
 he said aside to Callias. " Only, I should re- 
 commend you to say anything you want a 
 German to understand in plain language, and 
 to remember that the Northern people have 
 peculiar notions of self-respect. The best 
 way to the mother's heart, if you really wish 
 the girl for a bride, is to do something for the 
 freedom of her children. On that point the 
 family are fanatical." 
 
 Very different images imprinted them- 
 selves on the minds of the two Greeks and 
 the young German, as they walked together 
 over the same hills and valleys and looked at 
 the same Acropolis. 
 
 The colors of the frescoes were effaced in 
 the moonlight, and the cluster of glorious 
 7*
 
 154 VICTORY OF 'THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 temples, the many crowns wherewith the 
 city had been crowned in the days of her 
 youth, rose white as alabaster against the 
 depths of the clear sky. 
 
 Siward looked at the fair columns and per- 
 fect outlines, and up to the bronze statue of 
 the Virgin goddess, shining in the moon- 
 beams, her spear and shield outstretched in 
 ceaseless guardianship over the sleeping city. 
 
 He looked, and thought of Cloelia the Ves- 
 tal in the silent Temple near the Roman Fo- 
 rum, feeding the sacred fire, and keeping, he 
 thought, just such a guard for Rome. 
 
 He thought of Clcelia the Vestal, and of 
 the Altar to Pity, and of the streets and hill- 
 sides unpolluted by the gladiatorial Games or 
 by the Cross. 
 
 Callias thought of what he saw. The whole 
 beautiful present scene flashed back from his 
 mind as from a silver mirror. 
 
 The strip of level land edged by the shin- 
 ing sea, broken by the hills made to be the 
 pedestals they were, bounded by the dim 
 forms of the mountains, with groves of flow- 
 ering shrubs, and silver-gray olives, and 
 stately planes, . and the silver threads of 
 streams enriching it (after the recent rains) as 
 with delicate embroidery. 
 
 And at their feet, in the Agora, on the hill- 
 sides, on the hill-tops, Athens, in his eyes
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 155 
 
 divinely peopled with the forms of gods and 
 god-like men, under the silent colonnades, in 
 the clear spaces under the clear heavens, en- 
 shrined in Divine Dwellings in every grove 
 and on every slope ; forms of imperishable, 
 immutable beauty ; a whole Olympus, a whole 
 Iliad and Odyssey in marble. 
 
 Laon saw the Past, with its great deeds, 
 and heard its great voices. The Beauty to 
 him was merely a vesture for the Life. 
 
 The vesture remained. The life had passed 
 away. But in the silence of the sleeping city 
 all came back to him. 
 
 He saw the Persians beaten back from the 
 shores ; he saw the Three Hundred dead, 
 yet deliverers vanquished, yet victors in 
 that dark pass of Thermopylae. 
 
 He saw in the brazen Athena the work of 
 Phidias and the spoils of Marathon. 
 
 From the Painted Porch in the Agora, from 
 the Garden in the City, from the trees by the 
 dry bed of the Ilissus, or from the greener 
 groves of the Academy, he heard great 
 voices, even then voices of old, even then, 
 he felt, to almost all men around him, faint 
 murmurs from the world of shadows ; the 
 voice of Socrates over the poison-cup, the 
 voices of Plato, of Aristotle, of ^Eschylus, of 
 Sophocles, and of Demosthenes. 
 
 The old man sat in a silence longer than
 
 156 VICTORY OF TUE VANQUISHED. 
 
 usual with him. He felt his companions 
 scarcely in harmony with him, and it was one 
 of those moments when a discord jarring on 
 the music within would have been not merely 
 an annoyance, but a pain. He wished for the 
 child Clcelia Diodora, his disciple, his god- 
 given. She would have understood. But 
 what was the use of saying what he felt about 
 Greece to a sceptical young sculptor or to a 
 Northern barbarian ? 
 
 The two young men roamed about the hills 
 together, and soon became on very good 
 terms with each other ; but the old man plead- 
 ed his lameness, and sat on the rock-platform 
 whence had resounded the voice of Demos- 
 thenes, meditating alone. 
 
 When they came back they found him still 
 seated, leaning on his staff, but with his face 
 to the City, instead of its being, as when they 
 left him, towards the Acropolis. 
 
 " The true Sanctuary of Athens is not 
 there," he said, rising and pointing up to the 
 Acropolis. 
 
 " It is below, in the prison where Socrates 
 took the poison-cup calmly and cheerfully as 
 a wine-cup at a banquet, where the officer of 
 the prison wept for him, deeming him the 
 most noble, meek, and excellent man that 
 ever entered into that place ; but where he 
 wept not for himself, for he said, ' When I
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 157 
 
 have drunk the poison I shall no longer re- 
 main with you, but shall depart to some hap- 
 py state of the blessed ;' conjuring those who 
 loved him not to grieve when he died, as if 
 it was indeed he who suffered some dreadful 
 thing, or to say of his interment, It is Socra- 
 tes who is carried out and buried. ' Of all his 
 time, the best, and wisest, and most just,' the 
 best men of his time said, yet refusing to be 
 called wise, but only one who loved Wisdom. 
 That vanquished man was the true victor 
 here. Why should we grieve for Athens," he 
 continued. " In her youth she rejected Soc- 
 rates, and now in her old age she has built a 
 temple to the goddess Rome, and Cassar Au- 
 gustus, beside her Parthenon !" 
 
 " Even Socrates refused to be called wise," 
 said Callias. " Doubtless he knew how im- 
 possible it is to know." 
 
 " To know what ?" said old Laon, reviving 
 and enkindling at the prospect of a debate. 
 " To know of what the world is made wheth- 
 er of fire, or of water, or of nothing. What 
 matters it not to know ? But that it is possi- 
 ble to know what it does matter to know ; 
 what are beauty, and justice, and truth what 
 we are. This Socrates lived to make clear to 
 all men. This he died because men would 
 not know. This Athens has perished because 
 she would not know. And this, young men,
 
 158 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 it matters infinitely that you and I should 
 know." 
 
 "Can we know?" said Callias. "Did he 
 know ? Did he not after all embark as on a 
 raft, risking himself on an unknown sea? Has 
 the ' surer conveyance or the divine reason' 
 he spoke of yet come ?" 
 
 Laon did not reply. 
 
 As they spoke they had been winding slow 
 ly round Mars Hill the Areopagus, Laon lead- 
 ing. At that moment they came out on a 
 wide deep ravine on the eastern side of the 
 hill. 
 
 " That is right !" murmured the old man at 
 last. " I thought I remembered. Boy," he 
 said, turning to Siward, " you asked me once 
 in what temple I worshiped. Come and see." 
 
 Further and further they penetrated into 
 the shadows of the ravine, until at the end of 
 the chasm, in a recess where not a ray of the 
 moon, now sinking, reached, they came to a 
 natural- cave in the rock, faced with a few 
 simple columns, scarcely perceptible in the 
 gloom. 
 
 " This is the shrine of the Eumenides," the 
 old man said in a low voice. " Here at least 
 we must call them by their least-dreaded 
 name ! Here came of old from the Acropolis 
 the three avenging goddesses." 
 
 " How are these divine beings propitiated ?"
 
 VICTOR Y OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 asked Siward, after a long silence, his voice 
 also insensibly subdued to the awed stillness 
 of the place. 
 
 " They are never propitiated !" Laon re- 
 plied. " What they determine is just, and 
 cannot be changed. Ceaselessly their noise- 
 less footsteps pursue the murderer, the per- 
 jurer, those who disobey parents, who scorn 
 the suppliant or the aged, or betray the 
 guest." 
 
 " Their steps are slow," said Siward, think- 
 ing of the betrayed wife of Herman, and of 
 the murdered babes of the house of Cloelius. 
 
 " They can afford to be slow," said Laon. 
 " They are older than all the gods." 
 
 " What are their forms ?" 
 
 " There are two accounts of their appear- 
 ance," said Laon. " Necessarily. To those 
 they pursue they seem clothed in black, their 
 hair twined with serpents, their eyes dripping 
 blood. They are called the Avengers, the 
 Furies. To the just, and to the injured whom 
 they avenge, they are beautiful, grave, and 
 majestic virgins, clad and girt like huntresses, 
 as those who have work to do, and cannot 
 linger about it the Eumenides. For they 
 are swift enough when the time comes. And 
 by their side is justice, the Divine ?" 
 . " And are sacrifices offered to them ?" asked 
 Siward.
 
 160 VICTOR Y OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " Some sacrifice black sheep to them," Laon 
 replied, " as to the gods of the lower world. 
 Not, I think, to much avail. But I know 
 hands from which I think they would accept 
 the white turtle-dove, and the golden narcis- 
 sus, also sacred to them, gladly." 
 
 Slowly and in silence they retraced their 
 steps through the solemn ravine, leaving that 
 secret shrine of Conscience buried deep in 
 the rocky heart of Athens, underneath the 
 glorious temples which shone on her sunny 
 heights. 
 
 And the facts most deeply stamped on Si- 
 ward's mind, as they quitted Athens, were, 
 that in the meeting-place of her people there 
 stood an Altar to Pity, and deep in the bosom 
 of her hills a Temple to Justice.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 pure 
 
 WAY from Attica sailed the ships of 
 Germanicus, over the sunny Grecian 
 seas. Their last glimpse of the beau- 
 tiful city was by sunset all her 
 and stately marbles glowing- with a 
 
 tender rose, deepening into crimson on her 
 weather-beaten crags, and contrasted with 
 the imperial purple which draped the further 
 hills. 
 
 To the eye still the Athens of the glorious 
 old days ; perhaps even to the eyes of Caesar 
 Germanicus, as her multitudes poured out on 
 his departure to lavish on him the parting 
 honors, and speed his ships on their eastward 
 way. 
 
 His sojourn had been one festival. Perhaps 
 that flush of welcome seemed to all for the 
 moment as the flush of rekindling life. The 
 responsive enthusiasm which his genuine ad- 
 miration for their past rang out of the Athe- 
 nians, may have hidden from him the hollow- 
 
 (161)
 
 1 62 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 ness of the present. It is not from the high 
 places of the world that the widest or the tru- 
 est prospects are seen. 
 
 From Athens he sailed to the coasts of 
 Troy. The grandson of Augustus had other 
 memories besides those of Homer to make 
 those shores sacred to him. 
 
 The brief blossoming-time of Latin poetry 
 had scarcely passed. Its fragrance lingered 
 on the air. Virgil had died not forty years 
 before ; Horace scarcely thirty. Their gar- 
 dens and farms must still have retained the 
 traces of their planting. Ovid was dying of 
 sleeplessness and melancholy, an exile by the 
 Euxine Sea, by the mouth of the river Dan- 
 ube, on the borders of the Empire. 
 
 The earnest character of Germanicus him- 
 self, it was said, not without the gifts of a po- 
 et and an orator must have given him more 
 sympathy with Virgil, the earnest and relig- 
 ious poet of the Imperial house, than with 
 Horace, the fanciful singer of the light and 
 luxurious society of the Empire. His own 
 life had more of the grave epic than of the 
 light and graceful lyric in it. 
 
 Around his pure and simple life, on every 
 side the laxity of a state slowly dissolving 
 through its own vices ; around his own ear- 
 nest and loyal character, the entangling and 
 the cramping suspicions of a jealous court ;
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^3 
 
 in no sense and for no period were the brief 
 years allotted him a voyage over a sunny sea. 
 
 Behind him on this very voyage, his ene- 
 my, the friend of Tiberius, followed close 
 the aristocratic Piso ; as a member of the old 
 Calpurnian House, despising the grandson of 
 the plebeian Octavius; as the confidential 
 emissary of Tiberius, losing no opportunity 
 of thwarting the nephew whose popularity 
 the Emperor dreaded ; as a practical and pro- 
 saic Roman, priding himself on his scorn for 
 the young Csesar's literary tastes. 
 
 Scarcely had Germanicus left Athens as a 
 reverent pilgrim when Piso entered it, with 
 all the insolent pomp of the dominant race, 
 openly ridiculing the courtesy of his chief, 
 and calling the Athenians " an impure conflux, 
 the offscouring of various nations," enemies 
 of Sulla and of Augustus. 
 
 In which sentence, when he heard it, old 
 Laon grimly acquiesced. 
 
 The Roman claims of Trojan descent were 
 by no means palatable to the old man, and he 
 grumbled at the expedition of Germanicus 
 to the plains of Troy. The Latin literature 
 he considered an upstart reproduction of the 
 Greek. Against the ^neid he cherished an 
 undisguised prejudice, half literary half polit- 
 ical. 
 
 " The whole thing," he said to Siward and
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 to Callias, who accompanied them, " is noth- 
 ing better than an attempt to patch up the 
 Imperial pedigree ; an endeavor to make a 
 plebeian house into a patrician by giving it 
 ancestors in the clouds. The gods exist in it 
 for nothing but to be the forefathers of Cae- 
 sar ; Providence exists but to ensure the su- 
 premacy of Caesar. The whole of our glori- 
 ous old Olympus is cut up into household 
 images to carry in procession at the Imperial 
 funerals." 
 
 Indeed, much as he appreciated the courage 
 and courtesy of Germanicus, Laon had some-' 
 thing of an aristocratic scorn for the new Ro- 
 man attempts at literature. 
 
 " Caesar Germanicus would have been bet- 
 ter employed subduing the Germans, and 
 making canals in Batavia, like his father, than 
 hunting out antiquities at Ilium. No doubt 
 he would have liked it better ; it is not his 
 fault that he is here. But the true type of 
 the Roman is Cneius Piso. The Emperor 
 feels it, and we Greeks feel it. It is more 
 tolerable for these people to profess to scorn 
 us, than to pretend to understand us." 
 
 "./Eneas ! " he grumbled, as he was toiling 
 over the plains of Troy ; " who ever heard of 
 JEneas ? If he were a true Trojan he ought 
 to have died with his family at Troy, instead 
 of wandering over the world breaking foolish
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^5 
 
 women's hearts ; himself, like a foolish wo- 
 man, listening to every fortune-teller he came 
 across." 
 
 Callias ventured to suggest the beauty of 
 some of Virgil's descriptions of nature. 
 
 " Babbling," said the old man " Babyish 
 babbling, as in a doting old age, of the green 
 fields and flowers of childhood ! What do 
 the old patricians or the new rich men of 
 Rome care for green fields or groves, except 
 as places to cool wine and eat peacocks and 
 sucking-pigs in, purchased at the price of 
 plundered provinces? Nothing irritates one," 
 he concluded, " like this simulated simplicity, 
 this extra-fine rusticity, except this turning 
 of poetry and religion into a factory of ficti- 
 tious pedigrees." 
 
 The old man did not recover until they 
 sailed out of sight of the funeral mounds of 
 Troy and the heights of Ida. Then he soft- 
 ened a little towards the Latin poets, and con- 
 ceded that Virgil had the only religion, the 
 only poetry, a Roman was capable of the 
 worship of the goddess Rome ; but that, blind- 
 ed by the degradation of his time, he had mis- 
 taken Imperialism for patriotism. 
 
 " And who- are we, the Greeks of this age, 
 that I should scorn any ?" he concluded sadly. 
 " The beauty of our old days was the beauty 
 of athletes, trained to the race and the battle-
 
 1 66 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 field the beauty of strength. The beauty 
 of these days is the beauty of the barber and 
 the perfumer. Of old the thought expressed 
 the words, and no man talked of style ; now 
 the style but hides the crumbling dust of 
 thought." 
 
 At Lesbos, Agrippina gave birth to her last 
 child the last joyful family event in the brief 
 life of Germanicus. Everywhere the father 
 and mother and the children went together, 
 making a home for each other on any shore 
 or on any sea. They had rejoiced together 
 over the birth of nine children, and mourned 
 together over the death of three. 
 
 At Colophon they landed on the Asiatic 
 shore. By the banks of its cool stream, and 
 under the fragrant shadows of its pine-cov- 
 ered mountain, Germanicus consulted the 
 oracle of the Clarian Apollo, where deep in a 
 cave on the hill-side a fountain bubbled up 
 from its rocky source. The priest drank of 
 the sacred waters, and gave forth the oracu- 
 lar answer in verse. 
 
 Dark rumors of what the significance of 
 this oracular answer was were murmured 
 among the household of Germanicus. Siward 
 was much cast down. The German villages 
 which Germanicus had burned, and the hosts 
 he had slain in fair fight, were merely in the
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. \fy 
 
 captive's eyes the necessary ravages of war. 
 If ever he reached the goal of his ambition, 
 and wielded hammer and sword under Her- 
 man, these wrongs he hoped to aid in aveng- 
 ing. And, meantime, the courtesy of the 
 young Caesar towards those enemies with 
 whom he came personally into contact, and 
 his serene and generous temper, had wrought 
 its charm on the captives, and attached them 
 to him. Siward felt him to be an enemy it 
 would be an honor to fight, and a master it 
 was no degradation to serve. 
 
 " Are there indeed Walas prophetic men 
 and women among the Greeks ?" Siward 
 said to Laon, as they re-embarked at Colo- 
 phon ; " and can these forebodings be true ?" 
 
 " It needs no special inspiration to forebode 
 mischief to the man Tiberius envies." was 
 Laon's oracular reply "a man whose foot- 
 steps are dogged by Cneius Piso and the in- 
 solent Plancina." 
 
 At Rhodes it was given to Germanicus 
 to do a deed worthy of Christian chivalry. 
 He well knew with what purpose Piso was 
 sent, and how malignantly he and his wife 
 were fulfilling it : yet, when at Rhodes a sud- 
 den tempest drove the ship of Piso on the 
 rocks, and a little languor or delay in sending 
 help might have suffered his enemy to perish, 
 the victim of the winds or of Eumenides, he
 
 1 68 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 sent aid to him speedy and effective, as to his 
 dearest friend, and saved him from destruc- 
 tion. Such triumphs are not assigned to 
 many. To Germanicus, the act was simple and 
 inevitable, as part of his every-day life of duty. 
 
 The rescued enemy went on his way not 
 softened and therefore necessarily hardened 
 to a baser bitterness to thwart and malign 
 his deliverer by every means in his power ; 
 whilst Germanicus went quietly on his way 
 to fulfill his task for Rome. Well knowing 
 the intrigues of Piso against himself, he left 
 him to carry them out as he might ; whilst 
 he marched his troops into Armenia, reduced 
 Cappadocia to the condition of a province, 
 and, like a general of the Republic in her 
 noblest days, true to the Roman standard of 
 patriotism and duty, himself uncrowned and 
 a loyal citizen, placed the royal crown of Ar- 
 menia on the head of another Artaxes, the 
 chief recognized by Rome. 
 
 The world was not without its foreshadow- 
 ings, as it has not been without its reflected 
 lights, of those silent thirty years of subjec- 
 tion to Duty, of " patient continuance in well- 
 doing," then being lived at Nazareth. At 
 Nazareth, so near Antioch in the very prov- 
 ince where the young Caesar was bearing his 
 burden of stately rule the true King was 
 bearing His burden of loving service.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. i$g 
 
 Germanicus knew not of Him. 
 
 But we, who believe and are sure that He 
 did not begin to live at Bethlehem, nor begin 
 to work for men in Galilee, any more than 
 He ceased to live on Calvary, know that His 
 care for men does not begin when men begin 
 to know it.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 HE year fatal to Cassar Germanicus 
 had opened. The restlessness of 
 that unhappy age was on him. Per- 
 haps, also, something of the restless- 
 ness of disease the insatiable longing which 
 sometimes besets those whose days are to be 
 few to make them full, to live long in the little 
 while. Early in the year he left Syria to make 
 a progress through Egypt. 
 
 By doing this he was, perhaps unconscious- 
 ly, breaking a statute of Augustus. Egypt, the 
 granary of Rome, from which every spring the 
 Roman citizens drew their supplies of food, 
 was not to be trodden by Roman feet without 
 permission from the Emperor. 
 
 Every summer, in the harbor of Alexandria, 
 it was possible some daring rebel hand might 
 seal and dry up the fountain which fed the life 
 of Rome. Anchored by the white quays of 
 the great mart of the world, lay the fleet of 
 Alexandrian corn-ships. Stored in their 
 (170)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. iji 
 
 holds lay the golden fruit of Egypt and the 
 Egyptian river. Before them stretched the 
 Mediterranean, with its sudden storms. On 
 the other side of the sea, on the nearest points 
 of the Italian shore, watchmen were stationed 
 to catch the first glimpse of the life-bringing 
 sails full-set to distinguish them from others, 
 even when close to the harbor and to des- 
 patch the glad tidings by beacons and flying 
 posts to the anxious City. The departure of 
 that fleet was a sacred event. It arrival was 
 a national festival. 
 
 For already the mistress of the world, look- 
 ing down over a waste Campagna, and on 
 scattered villas, and on farms tilled by slaves, 
 from which the peasant-proprietors had long 
 since been absorbed, depended for her exis- 
 tence on the work of other men and the har- 
 vests of other soils. 
 
 There was a reverse to the medal of the 
 "goddess Rome" enthroned with her civic 
 crown beside Augustus. It was the mendicant 
 Rome kneeling to receive her dole of daily 
 bread at the hands of the Emperor, whilst the 
 Emperor anxiously watched the winds on 
 which his granaries depended. 
 
 Such a treasure-house needed to be well 
 guarded, and Germanicus received a sharp 
 remonstrance from Tiberius for entering it 
 without special sanction.
 
 !72 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 He had probably regarded it rather as the 
 threshold of another treasure-house, the key 
 of the ancient granaries from which Greek 
 and Jew alike had tasted " the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians." 
 
 To him, as to us, a land of remains and 
 ruins, a mummy swathed in records of its 
 own past glory ; the intervening eighteen 
 centuries between us and old Rome being 
 but one stage in that far-reaching past. To 
 him, as to us, a land strangely symbolized by 
 its river flowing so invariably from unexplored 
 sources ; its sphinx, seeming to hide beneath 
 her mute lips the answer to riddle never solv- * 
 ved ; its pyramids, burying (among whatever 
 other secrets) under a mountain of stone the 
 lost history of a forgotten life. 
 
 Commercially and intellectually, indeed, 
 Egypt had again begun to stir with reviv- 
 ed activity ; as the channel of the trade with 
 the East, the vast granary of the West, and 
 the great paper and glass factory of the em- 
 pire. The furthest extremes of the empire 
 were continually brought before the eyes of 
 the travellers as they journeyed through the 
 Nile valley. On the river they were con- 
 stantly passing boats and barges filled with 
 paper and glass of native manufacture and 
 grain of native growth. Along the banks, 
 pencilled against the glowing sky, moved
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^3 
 
 slow droves of camels and mules, laden with 
 spices, perfumes, dyes, and gems, from the 
 farthest south and east, and guarded with 
 German horsemen brought from the Northern 
 forests. 
 
 In the schools of Alexandria, with their in- 
 genious compounds of theosophies ancP philo- 
 sophies, Eastern and Western, Hebrew and 
 Greek, Callias found much to admire, but old 
 Laon was far from content with them. 
 
 " Mere shreds and patchwork," he said 
 " patched together, not interwoven ; mere 
 debris crumbled together, not fused. To 
 make a fusion, you must have a furnace glow- 
 ing with living fire ; and this is an age, not of 
 fire, but of the ashes of old fires. Mere dust 
 and ashes of thought, from Greece, Persia, 
 India, Syria. Not fused together," he con- 
 cluded ; " crumbled together, and all dust." 
 
 More especially, however, his indignation 
 was excited by Philo and the philosophic 
 Jews of Alexandria. 
 
 " Of all false pretences in the world," he 
 said, " the worst is a philosophizing Jew. It 
 is even worse than an aesthetical Roman. If 
 the Jews have anything fine about them, it is 
 their intense unconquerable national life, their 
 uncompromising fidelity to their lawgiver, 
 and to their One Imperial Divinity. Give 
 me the narrowest and most exclusive Phari-
 
 174 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 see that ever glared at us Gentiles under his 
 phylacteries, rather thanthe smoothest Hellen- 
 among them." 
 
 " You would prefer the Egyptian Therapeu- 
 tasa, or the Essenes by the Dead Sea," Callias 
 said, " who, regarding all matter as evil and 
 the bocty as a prison, live in seclusion from all 
 men, in adoration of God, until death shall 
 absorb them into His essence." 
 
 " They are not essentially Jews at all," Laon 
 replied. " Mystics are of no age or race. 
 They are a Vestal priesthood, guarding the 
 deathless fire for all humanity an echo of the 
 sense of exile and home sickness which besets 
 the highest natures everywhere." 
 
 Yet vigorous as might be the life of the 
 present in Egypt, it was evident that the life 
 of the past had been mightier. Even then 
 the cities of the dead, the " durable dwelling- 
 places," dwarfed the cities of the living. Even 
 then, on the heart of the German captive, the 
 land of the mysterious River left two impres- 
 sions, which effaced all the rest : that Death is 
 longer than life, and Nature stronger than 
 man. 
 
 The Temple of Apis was still standing, and 
 had its priesthood a priesthood which count- 
 ed its duration by millenniums. The stately 
 Black Bull, with the distinctive white marks 
 on brow and back, was marching about his
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^5 
 
 sacred courts, adored and giving oracles, 
 while his huge sarcophagus was awaiting 
 him in the solemn vaults of the rock temple 
 underground. 
 
 Again, with a restless foreboding, Caesar 
 Germanicus consulted the oracle in the Apis 
 Temple ; and again dark rumors circulated 
 among his followers as to what the enigmati- 
 cal answer threatened the shadows, doubt- 
 less, of that love which cannot exist among 
 mortal creatures without fear. Everywhere 
 he won the confidence of the people by a con- 
 descension and courtesy which seem to have 
 been as inseparable from him as his athletic 
 beauty and his temperate, pure life. It was 
 natural in him to wear the Gaulish bearskin 
 in Gaul, and the Grecian sandals in Grecian 
 lands. Popularity followed him ; he did not 
 seem to seek it. He bore about him the inde- 
 finable charm which often surrounds those 
 who thread this earth lightly, as those who 
 have not to build on it, but to pass through it, 
 and go early to dwell elsewhere. Not being 
 occupied with far-reaching schemes of person- 
 al ambition, he had leisure to throw himself 
 altogether into the life of the moment, and of 
 the men around him ; leisure to dwell in the 
 past to be kind and thoughtful to all near 
 him ; space in his mind for a wide lateral 
 horizon, and wide distances behind him per-
 
 176 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 haps, unconsciously, because the horizon be- 
 fore him was so near. 
 
 He visited the mighty remains of Thebes. 
 One of the oldest priests interpreted to him 
 the hieroglyphics on its huge obelisks, telling 
 him of the armies and conquests and costly 
 tributes of empires that had preceded and 
 equalled Rome, and had passed away for 
 ever. He saw the Pyramids, " raised like 
 mountains amid almost impassable heaps of 
 sand." He heard the music " struck by the 
 solar rays " from the stone statue of Memnon. 
 
 For the first time, in the Temple of Apis, 
 Siward came in contact with an organized 
 priesthood. In Rome he had seen priests, but 
 they were ministers of state, or diviners of 
 the destinies of Rome. At Delphi and at 
 Claros he had heard of a priest and a priest- 
 ess ; but each was a mere isolated organ of 
 divine utterances a solitary gateway into the 
 unknown world. 
 
 In Egypt still existed a priestly caste, with 
 rites reaching back to unknown ages. The 
 gods were not deified men or humanized di- 
 vinities, but mystic animals : the monotonous, 
 mysterious, changeless, unprogressive, animal 
 nature, adored in itself as a type of the mono- 
 tonous changes and the changeless revolutions 
 of the visible world, especially of the Egyptian
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 177 
 
 world of the Sun, the River, and the Desert, 
 with its infinite expanses of starry sky : Nature 
 and Death surrounding, outlasting, hemming 
 in the little life of man. 
 
 " Did they indeed hem in this little life ? Or 
 was this little life but to expand through them 
 into something wider and more enduring to 
 blend with this infinite Nature to endure 
 through this unconquerable Death ? Was this 
 life of ours indeed but as the green strip be- 
 tween two deserts ? " 
 
 Questions of this kind came into Siward's 
 mind as he stood with Laon among the tombs 
 by the Nile, little able as he was to frame the 
 questions with his lips. 
 
 "What did they mean by all this work?" 
 he asked, as they looked round on the elabor- 
 ate paintings and inscriptions on the walls of 
 one of the sepulchral chambers. " Is it for the 
 dead or for the living ? " 
 
 " The living made this for themselves when 
 they should be dead," said Laon. " Their 
 houses they regarded as only sojourning 
 places. This was to be their abode. On this 
 they lavished all their art. Life, they felt, is 
 transitory. Death endures." 
 
 " Death endures," murmured Siward. " But 
 the dead? Are those temples to death the 
 conqueror, or to the living he conquered ? " 
 
 " Rumors had come to them of long jour- 
 8*
 
 1 78 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 neys of the soul when it departs hence," said 
 Laon. " These were written in their Book 
 of the Ritual of the dead; and therein they 
 swathed their mummies. A strange itinerary 
 for the long journey of the soul when it leaves 
 the body, directions of the way it is to take, 
 descriptions of the enemies and the adven- 
 tures it is to meet in the unknown world, and 
 of a solemn judgment it is to undergo beyond 
 the dark waters for the deeds done in the 
 body." 
 
 "It? the soul? we?" asked Siward ea- 
 gerly. "Who would not hear more of this? 
 But if it if we depart, for whom is this 
 abode made beautiful? The soul never en- 
 tered here ; she had begun the long journey 
 before the mummy was laid here. What 
 knows she of this? What is all this to 
 her?" 
 
 " What do we know ? " said Laon. " What 
 is all this world, what are heaven and earth, 
 stars, deserts, and seas to us? " 
 
 " But, Laon," said the boy, " they must have 
 thought they knew. They must have meant 
 to serve some one by all this." 
 
 " There were dim sayings about the soul 
 coming back to claim its old companion ; of a 
 Rising Again," said the old man musingly. 
 " But this I cannot think ; to come back from 
 the stars and the free heavens, and the acquit-
 
 VICTORY OF TUB VANQUISHED. ijg 
 
 tal of the great judgment, to this? Does the 
 Psyche come back into the chrysalis ? " 
 
 And silently they left the silent place. 
 
 But days afterwards, as they were sitting 
 one evening on the deck of the boat on the 
 broad Nile, Siward said to Laon, 
 
 " Who wrote that Book of the long journey 
 of the dead ? Who could write it but some 
 one who had gone and come back ? Did this 
 ancient people ever know of one who had ? " 
 
 Laon shook his head. 
 
 " The Egyptians are indeed an ancient 
 people," he said. " But the most ancient na- 
 tions in the world have no record of any who 
 came back to tell of that journey." 
 
 There was a pause, and afterwards looking 
 up through the pure night air and through 
 the stars, Siward spoke again, 
 
 " Laon," he said, " these tombs are for the 
 rich. The rich only who can build them- 
 selves houses on earth can be embalmed, or 
 can build themselves enduring dwellings. 
 Here, also, as in our Valhalla, the dwelling- 
 place of our elect, our heroes, there is no 
 place for the poor, for the slave, for the multi- 
 tude." 
 
 " Philosophy has her high things for the 
 slave, for the poor," said Laon. 
 
 " For the wise slave," Siward rejoined, " the 
 wise poor, those who are rich in inner wealth.
 
 I8o VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 But these multitudes, everywhere, these poor 
 disarmed peasants who toil from morning to 
 night with no reward but blows, and hardly 
 bread enough to keep them from starvation, 
 for these no one has any hope, nor any good 
 tidings ! " 
 
 " These multitudes," said old Laon careless- 
 ly, " the base, ignorant multitudes ! Those 
 who in Rome, if free, live as beggars on the 
 doles of Egyptian corn ; swarming like 
 noisome flies about the tall houses of the 
 Suburra, and finding their highest pleasure 
 in seeing beasts and men torture each other 
 at the games ? The multitudes who, in Athens, 
 suffered Socrates to be murdered ? who live 
 butterflies or grasshoppers, chattering and 
 fluttering from infancy to dotage ? What 
 good tidings would you have for them ? 
 They chirp and flutter, or sting and buzz, or 
 croak and paddle away their little lives, and 
 perhaps even store honey and wax for the 
 generations of a coming summer? What 
 would you have more for such ? Some other 
 world in which they may chirp and buzz, and 
 flutter and chatter on for ever, and perhaps 
 not croak or sting ? It is to be hoped in all 
 courtesy that such a world exists. But who 
 would care to know? Not they, at least." 
 
 "Oh, Laon," said the German captive, "/ 
 am not wise! I feel it but too keenly among
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. igi 
 
 all these generations of the wise. I am not 
 wise, I or mine, as your sages. For us what 
 good tidings can come?" 
 
 " If your race have not the wisdom of our 
 sages," interposed Callias, who had been 
 standing near, " you have beauty, of soul and 
 flesh. And for Beauty there is a place for 
 ever. Because Beauty, as well as Wisdom, 
 and Justice, and Truth, are real ; at least, so 
 Laon's sages say." 
 
 The boy shook his head. 
 
 " That any should be beautiful seems such 
 an accident," he said. " These toiling, suffer- 
 ing multitudes, crouching under yokes, with 
 the Beauty as well as the Wisdom crushed 
 out of them ; to such it seems strange that no 
 religion and no philosophy can give a helping 
 hand, or a pitying word. For these are in 
 the world everywhere. These are the multi- 
 tudes." 
 
 " For those who have neither Beauty nor 
 Wisdom," replied Callias, with a disdainful 
 smile, " for those, indeed, I think the less room 
 the better, in any world ! " 
 
 But Siward's earnest nature wa's aroused, 
 and not easily to be lulled. 
 
 " It seems," he said to Laon, " almost as if 
 the whole race of men were like those doomed 
 races you told me of, pursued by solemn 
 avenging Eumenides. If one could tell for
 
 1 82 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 what crimes, or for whose, and find an expia- 
 tion ! or at least teach men how to avoid such 
 evil for the future ! " 
 
 " Philosophy does tell the wise," said old 
 Laon. "Are you not wise? Then rise above 
 these multitudes, and become wise. I am try- 
 ing to teach you all day long." 
 
 And, with some impatience, he closed the 
 dialogue.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 T length the journey through Egypt 
 was over. Germanicus and his 
 household were all bound for Anti- 
 och, but by different routes. 
 Some had gone by sea to Seleucia. To 
 Laon and Siward it was permitted to accom- 
 pany Callias, who was to pass through Judasa 
 to Tiberias, the new city of Herod Antipas, 
 which he was adorning with Greek sculpture. 
 It was said that in Syria some secrets were 
 known as to the tempering of fine sword- 
 blades ; and old Laon hoped to gain some 
 knowledge which would enrich him in the 
 years of liberty which he was expecting. Si- 
 guna also and little Hilda were with them. 
 
 As they paced up and down on the long 
 quays of Alexandria, waiting for the ship 
 which was to carry them to Joppa, they fre- 
 quently passed an old man who was standing 
 under the shadow of the angle of a wall, with 
 a woman seated beside him, still comparative- 
 
 (183)
 
 1 84 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 ly young, the pallor and Lhe changed curves 
 of her face apparently the result rather of sor- 
 row than of age. 
 
 The old man's lips were moving in an audi- 
 ble murmur, and he did not seem to pay any 
 heed to the passers-by. His absorption in his 
 occupation and indifference to all around ex- 
 ercised a kind of fascination on Siward, and 
 Laon's words fell on his ear uncomprehended 
 as he watched the strangers. The dress of the 
 old man was unusual ; on his brow, around 
 his wrists, and on the fringed hems of his long 
 white robe, were bound strips of parchment 
 inscribed with strange large black letters, not 
 like either Greek or Latin ; and from time to 
 time he made low obeisances, touching his 
 forehead as if in homage to some unseen 
 throne. The murmured words also, when 
 Siward came near enough to hear them, he 
 found were in a language utterly unintelligi- 
 ble to him, nasal, guttural, with weird, sad, 
 monotonous cadences in the voice. 
 
 At length he ventured to ask Laon who this 
 stranger could be, and what he would be 
 doing. 
 
 Laon cast a careless passing glance on the 
 old man and the sad-looking woman, and said 
 lightly- 
 
 " Jews ! Jews ! only some old Jewish bigot 
 praying."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 185 
 
 "Praying to what to whom?" Siward 
 ventured to inquire further. " There is no 
 temple and no image." 
 
 " How can I tell?" said Laon hastily. " Do 
 I know every superstition of every tribe in 
 these superstitious Oriental countries ? Pray- 
 ing to the bits of his law written on his gar- 
 ment, perhaps. When Pompey entered the 
 Sanctuary of their Temple, he is said to have 
 found it empty. But there were traditions of 
 its once having contained stone tables with 
 writing on them. I suppose they worship 
 their Book. They boast that they have a 
 very ancient sacred Book. But how should 
 I know? It concerns no one but themselves. 
 They look on themselves as the rightful mas- 
 ters of the world, and on all the rest of the 
 world as enemies. When they could, they 
 massacred every one who came near them, on 
 the ground of their not being Jews. And 
 probably they would do the same now, if they 
 could ; they are always in insurrection, fol- 
 lowing some Pretender who promises to make 
 them a nation of kings. But the Roman rule 
 is good at least for this. It keeps down fa- 
 natics like these. And yet they creep in ev- 
 erywhere. They have a genius for money- 
 making. Here at Alexandria they all but 
 outnumber the Greeks, and have two of the 
 best quarters of the City to themselves."
 
 1 86 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 There was something in Laon's tone, in 
 speaking of this Jew, so different from his 
 usual light and courteous tolerance of other 
 religions and opinions, that Si ward was per- 
 plexed. And at that moment the words of 
 Clcelia Diodora about the old Jew by the 
 fountain of Egeria at Rome flashed back on 
 his memory. 
 
 " They are always following some Pretend- 
 er," he mused, repeating Laon's words to 
 himself; and in his calm Teutonic way he 
 pondered the matter over in silence, until 
 he came on what seemed to him a solution. 
 " Perhaps because of this Great One the old 
 prophecy told them to expect." 
 
 And this ancient adored Book, this intense 
 and exclusive Patriotism, this long-expected 
 Deliverer linked themselves together in his 
 mind. 
 
 He longed to ask more, but felt that in La- 
 on's present frame of mind questions were 
 more likely to close than to open further 
 sources of information, and was silent. 
 
 Laon only vouchsafed one more remark on 
 the subject. 
 
 " What these Jews believe or worship," he 
 said, " is of no moment to any but themselves. 
 The exceptionally bad thing about them is 
 that they have no respect for other peoples' 
 religions or gods, but have the audacity to
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. ^7 
 
 declare that there is no God save their own, 
 and that all other worship is not merely use- 
 less but wicked. Any belief may be tolerated 
 in men, especially if it is hereditary and na- 
 tional, if people will keep it to themselves. 
 But a religion which would invade and con- 
 quer all other religions, is not to be tolerated, 
 any more than a nation which does the same. 
 Unless,, indeed, it can succeed," he concluded, 
 sarcastically. " In which case the only rem- 
 edy is to conquer the conqueror from within, 
 as we Greeks reconquer the Romans who can 
 think." 
 
 The voyage to Joppa lasted some days, in 
 consequence of contrary winds and calms. 
 
 The Jewish strangers were their fellow- 
 passengers. 
 
 At first they kept strictly apart ; but often 
 Sig'una's eyes met those of the Hebrew wom- 
 an sadly watching her and little Hilda, until 
 by degrees a friendly intercourse sprang up 
 between them. At first only by means of 
 signs, little attentions to the child, little pres- 
 ents of Syrian confectionary, little nameless 
 kindnesses. Then a few broken Greek words, 
 or Latin, and such extemporized language as 
 hearts drawn to each other can always find ; 
 and now and then Siward, with his more ex- 
 tended knowledge of Greek, was called on to 
 interpret.
 
 1 88 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " He is your son," the Jewess said. "You 
 are happy. You live for him." 
 
 " We are slaves ; we arc exiles," the Ger- 
 man mother replied. " We live for our mas- 
 ters' will. I may be separated from him at 
 any moment, at any caprice of our enemies." 
 
 " I am separated from my sons. For ever. 
 By the will we can none of us resist ; by the 
 bars we can none of us pass. God is almighty. 
 The sacred writers say He is merciful." 
 
 And slowly, through the quiet hours, the 
 story of her life crept out. 
 
 " I had two children, once, like you. He 
 took them both. We lived in Rome, near 
 the Fountain of Egeria, on the Cloelian Hill. 
 We were poor. The river overflowed, and 
 flooded the low grounds of the City. The 
 noisome exhalations entered our little home. 
 Others, who were rich, fled. We were poor, 
 and had nowhere to fly to. The fever seized 
 my boys. First the youngest, a babe, then 
 the eldest, a child like this. We laid them 
 underneath the rocky hills, in the Catacombs 
 of our people. We would not bury our dead 
 among the heathen. On their graves we 
 carved the dove with the olive branch, and 
 the word Peace. For my father is holy as 
 one of the prophets. And he said, ' The wa- 
 ters will subside, the flood which sweeps all 
 the race of men away ; and, as the dove in
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. jgQ 
 
 the Deluge of old, these our sweet babes shall 
 be welcomed into the Ark of God bearing 
 the olive branch of peace." And even now 
 they are at peace. But from me, from me 
 peace is gone for ever, until I rest where they 
 rest ; until the heavens are no more, and I am 
 welcomed where they shall be welcomed. If 
 ever He deems me worthy, Who has found 
 me so unworthy of His gifts here." 
 
 So, through the days they were together, 
 she spoke. To Siguna much that she said 
 was dim and strange, but the mothers' hearts 
 interpreted each other. 
 
 Only, the wife of Olave the brave soldier 
 and smith wondered that the stranger spoke 
 so little of her husband. The sons seemed to 
 have been everything to her. She watched 
 the old Jew to see why and how this could be. 
 
 And by degrees she began to understand. 
 
 Their journeying with the Jewish strangers 
 did not end with the voyage. Then, as now, 
 in spite of the firmness of the Roman rule, 
 it was expedient for travelers in Judasa or 
 Galilee to travel in companies. Besides the 
 danger of the predatory wandering Arabs, 
 always penetrating into the heart of the coun- 
 try by means of the creeks of desert which 
 run up into it from the east, the land was in- 
 fested by the remains of various bands of fa- 
 natical insurgents precursors of the " Assas-
 
 I 9 o VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 sins" followers of Judas of Galilee, in their 
 own eyes consecrating a life of lawless rapine 
 by a fierce fanatical patriotism, and by wild 
 hopes of a coming Jewish King. 
 
 The Jew Onias was glad of Gentile protec- 
 tion for himself and "his wife Esther, and for 
 the numerous gold pieces which, in spite of 
 his apparent poverty, he knew experienced 
 thieves would soon have detected under the 
 hems and folds of his garments. And while 
 sympathy had broken down the barrier of 
 race between the German mother and the 
 childless Esther, old Laon and Onias had 
 found a meeting-point in sundry elaborate ne- 
 gotiations concerning the manufacture and 
 sale of arms. 
 
 Their destination also was the same. An- 
 tioch was the present abode of Onias and Est- 
 her, as well as the native city of Laon. 
 
 It seemed to Laon that when once he should 
 be free, and supplied with the capital which 
 Onias " thought he had friends" who might 
 lend him, all things would be possible to him 
 for himself and those he cared to help. In- 
 deed, he felt already in the position of a pa- 
 tron to Siward, Siguna, and Callias ; and ac- 
 cordingly, armed with these benevolent inten- 
 tions, he indulged himself even more than 
 usually by sarcasms and whimsical severities 
 of language
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. igi 
 
 And meanwhile the lives of the sisters 
 Cloelia flowed on with a slow monotony at 
 Rome. 
 
 Services begun with enthusiasm by the 
 young Vestal priestess fell into a grave dull 
 routine. 
 
 " For Rome ! For Rome !" she repeated 
 to herself, as she fed the sacred fire, or drew 
 the pure water from the spring. " I am only 
 doing simple woman's work such as every 
 matron does for her husband's hearth for 
 the hearth-fire of the Patria, of Rome." 
 
 But none of the sorrows and joys which 
 keep the even flow of daily duty musical, by 
 breaking it, in lives which flow in natural 
 channels, came to keep the music fresh in the 
 Vestal's heart. 
 
 More and more mechanical became the 
 Temple services for her. 
 
 And through the monotonous syllables, 
 which lost their meaning by repetition, more 
 and more frequently jarred sharp interjections 
 of doubt. 
 
 Who, what was this fire-goddess whom she 
 served ? One of a confused multitude of di- 
 vinities on Olympus ? Did she know who 
 served her ? Did she care ? Was she good ? 
 All on Olympus were not. What was Rome 
 to her ? Or, again, was she more ancient than 
 Olympus ? Some hidden force of nature ?
 
 1 92 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Impersonal, then, and regardless of man as 
 the earthquake or the lightning ? 
 
 This Palladium which she guarded in the 
 sealed vase. What was it ? Who had thus 
 mysteriously bound destruction and misery 
 with such accidents as the breaking of an 
 earthen vase, or the extinction of a spark of 
 fire ? The same capricious powers which sent 
 earthquake, and lightning, and storm ? and 
 suffered the good, like her sister, to be de- 
 formed and wretched, and the bad, like so 
 many she heard of, to be beautiful and pros- 
 perous ? 
 
 What, who ruled the world ? Was it ruled 
 by some good Beings, who could not be dis- 
 turbed in the divine calm of their perpetual 
 festival by the brief woes of men ? Or, rather, 
 by some slumbering evil Beings, whom it 
 must be the ceaseless solicitude of men not to 
 awake to malignant vengeance by treading 
 on some of their smallest incomprehensible 
 caprices ? Or, again, by some steady irresisti- 
 ble Destiny, which wove in its unresting loom, 
 with entire indifference, the dark and the light 
 threads, both inevitable, into the course of 
 nature or the life of man ? 
 
 In any case, what was the meaning of her 
 ministry ? Was it really serving the gods, or 
 Rome, or any one ? 
 
 Then .this Rome itself, the Patria ! How
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 could she close her ears to all the dark ru- 
 mors of the wickedness around her? The 
 vestals lived in no cloistral seclusion ; they 
 had places of honor at the gladiatorial games ; 
 and that spectacle of torture and death which, 
 it is said, no Latin author dares to defend, 
 must have smitten with horror, at least at 
 first, other hearts than that of Clcelia Pulchra. 
 Moreover, she could not enter nor leave the 
 games, nor pass through the streets, without 
 becoming acquainted with evil unutterable. 
 
 Was this Rome indeed worth serving by 
 such a sacrifice as her life ? 
 
 And even if worth serving, might she not 
 have served it a thousandfold better by keep- 
 ing one humble home pure and warm with 
 love, as Agrippina kept the hearth of Ger- 
 manicus ? 
 
 So her days passed, till her whole life some- 
 times seemed like a mechanical sleep-walk- 
 ing, the only reality in it the love of her little 
 sister ; and that love, in the unavailing pity 
 it called forth, more than half sorrow. 
 
 With Clcelia, the deformed, there were in- 
 deed breaks enough in the daily current, sharp 
 rebukes and reproaches, and contemptuous 
 neglect worse than either. Yet the life, being 
 more natural, bitter as it often was, had sweet- 
 er moments. Her love for her sister also had 
 in it far more of joy than of sorrow. Fervent, 
 9
 
 IQ4 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 adoring, satisfied, it was at once a passion and 
 a religion. In Clcelia she believed, she knew, 
 she saw that " beauty and goodness and truth 
 were real, and do exist." 
 
 The tender pensiveness which she often saw 
 on the dear beautiful face only made it more 
 sacred. 
 
 The doubt and darkness below, the young 
 priestess would not for the world have be- 
 trayed. 
 
 Doubt, which is without hope of a solution 
 in noble natures, is silent. If it finds a voice, 
 it is because a faint glimmering of some sun- 
 rise of Hope has touched the strong Memnon 
 and made it speak. 
 
 Once only, when the deformed girl spoke 
 of what the old Jew had said of the hope of 
 his people, did Clcelia the Vestal betray the 
 void within. 
 
 " Did the old Jew say his nation had cher- 
 ished the hope for thousands of years, and 
 that he believes it near now ? Has any peo- 
 ple in the world kept hope alive so long ? 
 Has any heart in the world a hope which 
 grows brighter as the days wear on ? and we 
 have to see things as they are. What has fed 
 this hope ? Such a hope seems in itself a 
 miracle. It is like a sunrise living on through 
 the dulness of the common working-day." 
 
 Clcelia Diodora remembered the discour-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 195 
 
 aging words of Laon, his scornful warning 
 against the Jews, and trembled at this eager 
 reception of her words, lest by any unguarded 
 declaration she should bring the sister she 
 adored into contact with any evil chance. 
 And she replied, 
 
 " Laon said the Jews are a people'of misan- 
 thropes, and probably of atheists. That is 
 they hate the men of all other races, and blas- 
 pheme the gods of all other men. He said 
 they were a set of runaway slaves, who, be- 
 cause they had had no golden age in the past, 
 threw it into the future. The old Jew I saw 
 did not indeed seem to hate me. But Laon 
 bid me beware of them and their superstition 
 the last morning before he left. And I have 
 not spoken to the old Jew since." 
 
 The Vestal turned sadly away. 
 
 " A hope which makes men hate other men 
 instead of loving them cannot be worth much," 
 she said.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 O Siward, the words of the Jewess 
 Esther, as far as he heard them, from 
 herself or from his mother, were like 
 mystic oracles spoken dimly in some 
 echoing- cavern, beside the bubbling of a liv- 
 ing fountain. They opened, as through a veil 
 lifted for an instant and then dropped again, 
 glimpses into unknown worlds. 
 
 Chiefly because there was a certainty in 
 them which, amid all the confused and uncer- 
 tain sounds around him, smote on his mind 
 and conscience, as the call of a trumpet to 
 battle amidst the vague rushing of winds, like 
 a voice through the rolling of thunders. 
 
 This strange people, scattered everywhere, 
 yet possessed by a patriotism intense as his 
 own, with the Sacred Book, with the Hope 
 of a Deliverer, attracted him irresistibly. 
 
 And now pervading all these came another 
 thought, which seemed to inspire all. 
 
 There was something in the tone and way 
 (196)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 197 
 
 in which this Jewess uttered the name of God, 
 entirely different from anything he had ever 
 heard before. 
 
 It was not only that she spoke of only one 
 God. She spoke of that One with a quiet 
 certainty which made all the gods he had 
 heard of before retire as into a world of shades. 
 He could not have denned how, but it made 
 him think of a mock sun he had once seen in 
 a misty morning on the Northern mountains, 
 coldly shining until the real sun rose and the 
 mists cleared and warmed the world. The 
 mock sun was not nothing. If there had been 
 no real sun, it could not have been. 
 
 The shades in the under world were not 
 nothing. If there had not been men, there 
 could not be shades. But as the warm press- 
 ure to a beating human heart to the empty 
 meeting of arms folded in a vain embrace 
 around those dim forms as the ringing tones 
 of a living human voice to the attempted 
 sounds dying on those gasping lips so seemed 
 to him the God of this Esther the Jewess to 
 any god he had ever known of before. 
 
 It was not often she uttered the name. It 
 was scarcely with love, only always with a 
 quiet certainty of His living as really as any 
 she spoke to were living ; a sense of an inevit- 
 able, unchangeable relationship to Him, and 
 a conviction that He had spoken to men.
 
 1 98 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Other gods might be spoken about, perhaps 
 spoken to. This God had spoken. And with 
 irresistible longing Siward wanted to learn 
 what, and to whom. 
 
 Esther, and even Onias, seemed to walk 
 with a freer step and a higher bearing from 
 the moment they first trod the soil of Judaea. 
 
 " We are going to the City and the House of 
 our God," Esther said, and her eyes kindled. 
 
 And all day, as they rode among the corn- 
 fields and the orange-gardens of the maritime 
 plain, or among the vineyards and olive-groves 
 of the terraced hill-sides, her lips were mur- 
 muring fragments of the ancient songs of her 
 people. Strangely different from the songs 
 and legends of all other people, in this, that 
 through all the battle-songs and the strains 
 of mournful or exulting patriotism, through 
 all the stories of tender domestic love or of 
 heroic sacrifice, penetrates one living Name, 
 pervading, deepening, inspiring all. Jerusalem 
 is not the Sacred City only it is the " City 
 of our God ;" Zion is the perfection of beau- 
 ty, for out of Zion God hath shined ; it is not 
 the Temple and its services chiefly for which 
 the singer's heart sighs : " As the hart pant- 
 eth for the water brooks, my heart panteth 
 for Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, 
 for the living God. When shall I come and 
 appear before Thee ?"
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 All the day, as they slowly descended into 
 the valleys or climbed the rocky hills, a 
 solemnity seemed to deepen over the Jewish 
 woman. She scarcely spoke to any one, and 
 at length, when the last separating range was 
 crossed, and the towers and palaces and mas- 
 sive bulwarks, and above all the lofty fagade 
 of the Temple, came in sight, she alighted 
 from the ass she was riding, stretched out her 
 arms, then clasped her hands together as in 
 prayer, and wept. 
 
 She was a daughter of Jerusalem ; but she 
 had not seen the city since her childhood. 
 Her father, now an aged man in Rome, and 
 her mother, long since dead, had led her 
 childish feet along those streets, and -taught 
 her to bend in prayer within those sacred 
 courts. Her parents were among the few not 
 spoken of in any histories, Latin or Greek or 
 Jewish, save in the one history which is occu- 
 pied not with princes and states, but with 
 God and man. They were of those who had 
 waited in Jerusalem for God, and One whom 
 He would send. 
 
 Onias also dismounted and walked beside 
 her. He also had been saying long prayers 
 through the day. But his mind was too full 
 of the results of his negotiations with Laon 
 not to confide them to her. 
 
 "Esther," he said, "it is written, the Gen-
 
 200 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 tiles shall be our ploughmen and our bonds- 
 men. It is fulfilled this day, in a figure. This 
 old Greek is an armourer of the first quality. 
 He is to establish an armoury at Antioch, his 
 native city, where for the present we are to 
 abide. I shall take his wares on the most ad- 
 vantageous terms. At length I have arranged 
 all. I can have sale to any extent for such 
 weapons among our own people." 
 
 " Is there not risk in such trade?" she said, 
 trying to bring back her thoughts to meet 
 his. " Will not the Roman soldiers hinder 
 it?" 
 
 " Risk there may be," he said, loftily, but 
 lowering his voice. " What great good is to 
 be gained without risk ? But our people may 
 have use for arms the Gentiles will neither 
 like nor hinder. For Israel is it not worth 
 while to run some risk ? Was there no risk 
 to Gideon or to David the king? Besides," 
 he added, as if to himself, "he profits are 
 something out of the common way. I am 
 afraid to tell thee what they may be. This 
 Greek cannot get on without my help, and 
 naturally he must pay for it. Thou mayest 
 live like a princess." 
 
 " I am no princess, Onias," she said ; " not 
 even the humblest mother in Israel," she ad- 
 ded, with a sudden burst of pain. " What are 
 gold and silver to me ?"
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 QI 
 
 " Have I ever murmured at that?" he said, 
 with an altered tone. " He gave, and He hath 
 taken away." 
 
 " No, no," she said ; " thou hast not mur- 
 mured. It is I who have murmured and sin- 
 ned, and brought the curse on thee. If only 
 He had taken the silver and the gold, and left 
 the babes." 
 
 " Silver and gold had we none the less 
 needed, had the babes been left," he said, in a 
 tone of rebuke, half dreading what judgment 
 might follow a wish, in his eyes so profane. 
 " Gold is good, come when it may. Let us 
 not forget to praise God, therefore. He is 
 the giver of all. And praise is acceptable to 
 Him." 
 
 Accustomed as she was, in her husband, to 
 the inextricable confusion of love of country 
 with a half-bargaining, half-trembling religion, 
 his words did not surprise her. She attempt- 
 ed no reply, and they entered the gates of 
 Jerusalem in silence. 
 
 The city was magnificent with the buildings 
 of the great builder, Herod the Great. He 
 had died only twenty years before, and the 
 freshness of tint and of cutting had not passed 
 from the stone walls of the great amphitheatre, 
 which he had excavated and built outside the 
 walls. 
 
 Onias, from his Pharisaic adherence to the 
 9*
 
 202 VICTORY OF THE VANQUJSIIED. 
 
 ancient law, and Esther, with her worship of 
 the living Lawgiver, looked with equal horror 
 on these signs of Gentile dominion. Gentile 
 culture that could scarcely be called, which 
 was to be promoted by the sanguinary con- 
 flicts of the amphitheatre outside the walls, or 
 the unhallowed exhibitions of the theatre 
 within. 
 
 " Your people," said Laon to Onias, " rose 
 in insurrection, it is said, in the days of Herod 
 the Great, because he set up empty suits of 
 armour around the theatre. Is this true ?" 
 
 " It is true," replied Onias, his eyes kind- 
 ling ; " and they did well. Our law forbids 
 such idolatrous usages. They also did well 
 and died well, the young men who were 
 burned alive for tearing down the image of 
 an eagle which the king had dared set up 
 over the Temple gate. The men were burned 
 alive. But the eagle has never been replaced. 
 The Holy City is desecrated by no idols. 
 The Roman governors themselves venture 
 not to profane ife by bringing their idolatrous 
 standards within its gates. The troops are 
 quartered at the new city of Csesar, not in the 
 City of David." 
 
 " A golden eagle might have attractions to 
 the most pious crowds," suggested Laon, sar- 
 castically. " The gold, if not the image. It 
 could doubtless be melted down, as your an-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 203 
 
 cestors, I think, did with the gold ornaments 
 of the Egyptians. Only, if I mistake not, they 
 did not use them in a way your Lawgiver ap- 
 proved. There is a story of a golden calf, 
 made long before the days of these Romans." 
 
 " Our people sinned and suffered," said 
 Onias, gravely. " For this they were led into 
 captivity in Babylon. But since the restora- 
 tion they have never sinned thus again." 
 
 " Never sinned thus, indeed ?" remarked 
 Laon. " I see ; your people are wiser. It 
 displeases their Lawgiver to have the gold 
 molten into a calf or an eagle. Therefore 
 they melt it into gold pieces. They are wise. 
 Gold pieces buy Gentile wares, and can be 
 worshiped without transgressing the law." 
 
 Onias turned aside to the minor accusation. 
 
 " We do not worship the gold pieces. In 
 Judaea, we suffer not even the image of the 
 Emperor to be stamped on our Jewish coins. 
 The Roman governors respect our belief. 
 We would die rather than consent to have 
 idolatrous symbols set up within the walls of 
 Jerusalem." 
 
 It was true. The Roman governors knew 
 it. And old Laon knew it. 
 
 " You are a wonderful people," he said, 
 more respectfully ; " loving money as you do, 
 to love something you call your Divine law 
 better. And yet it is said your law is as
 
 204 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 strong in insisting on mercy and in forbidding 
 unfair dealing as in denouncing images. Are 
 there no oppressed poor and no hard bargains 
 within the walls of your Sacred City ?" 
 
 " We are not what we should be in the eyes 
 of our God," said Onias, gravely. " If we 
 were," he added, bitterly, " we should not be 
 what* we are in the eyes of man. Not the 
 Temple only should be undefiled by Gentile 
 feet. Not Jerusalem only should be untrod- 
 den by Roman legions. Not a foot of the 
 uncircumcised should enter within our bor- 
 ders, except to serve our people, and to adore 
 our God." 
 
 Laon did not pursue the subject. He turned 
 away and left the Jews together. But after a 
 long silence, he said to Callias and Siward, as 
 they rode together, by Herod's amphithea- 
 tre, 
 
 " When will some one rise against these 
 Romans, not for setting up images of the 
 gods, but for mangling the divinest images we 
 have of the gods between the teeth and claws 
 of beasts ? These Jews make insurrections 
 against what they call idolatry, when will 
 there be an insurrection against cruelty ? So 
 many altars to Power, and only one in the 
 world to Pity !"
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 NIAS and Esther found a lodging in 
 one of the garden-towers on the 
 Mount of Olives, the City being 
 crowded with worshipers who had 
 come up to the Feast of the Passover. Fairer 
 to the eye than ever before or since was 
 Jerusalem then, enthroned on the edge of the 
 hills, guarded by deep ravines. Some said 
 that the architectural magnificence of the city 
 exceeded that of Rome. 
 
 The lines of the flat roofs were broken by 
 the towers of Herod's palaces and fortresses, 
 and by the lofty richly decorated Front of the 
 Temple itself. 
 
 From the window of their garden-tower on 
 Olivet, Esther and Onias looked down one 
 spring evening on groves of ancient olives, 
 their silvery gray interspersed with the fresh 
 green of fig-trees, on glossy shrubberies of 
 myrtle, broken by the lofty tops of the sweep- 
 
 (205)
 
 206 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 ing cedars and by the feathery crowns of 
 palms. 
 
 The footpath and the high road to Bethany 
 wound along among the gardens into the hol- 
 low of the Kedron, dark then with the purple 
 shadows of evening. From these shadows 
 rose the beautiful mountain-city, dazzling 
 with all her stately new buildings, sacred with 
 all her ancient associations ; as yet desecrated, 
 and hallowed, by no Dolorous Way. 
 
 To the eyes of Onias and Esther, all these 
 princely castle-towers, all the columned clois- 
 ters, snow-white with fresh marble, or touch- 
 ed to a golden glow by the sun, all the gilded 
 roofs, were merely so many appendages or 
 testimonies of homage to the Sanctuary on 
 the edge of the ravine still retaining, in spite 
 of Herod's towering Front and golden roofs, 
 the likeness of the old Sacred Tent of the 
 Wilderness, around which their forefathers 
 had gathered. 
 
 The materials, and the art with which it 
 was built, were of little moment to the Jewish 
 pilgrims. To Onias it was the Sanctuary of his 
 race. To Esther it was the House of her God. 
 
 As they looked they could almost discern 
 the white-robed companies of priests moving 
 about the cloistered courts, in preparation for 
 the Feast. 
 
 But Esther said sorrowfully, " My father
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 207 
 
 used to say this Temple, with its golden roofs 
 and precious marbles, was poor and bare in- 
 deed, compared, not with the Temple of Sol- 
 omon, but with the ancient Tent in the Wil- 
 derness, covered with badger skins. For on 
 that the Cloud of Glory rested, and in its 
 Holy of Holies abode the Ark, the cherubims 
 shadowing the mercy-seat. When will the 
 Shechinah return !" 
 
 " It is ours to slay the sacrifice and purify 
 the sacred vessels," Onias replied. "God 
 only can fill the vessels, or send down the 
 Cloud." 
 
 " But oh, what sacrifices, Onias !" she said. 
 " Old words, which my father used to read, 
 keep ringing through my heart. ' To what 
 purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices ?' 
 ' Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an 
 abomination unto Me.' ' Your appointed 
 feasts My soul hateth : I am weary to bear 
 them.' Weary to bear them, Onias, so many 
 ages ago ! What then now ? Are we indeed 
 bringing Him what He asks for, what he cares 
 to have ? The cry of violence and strife is in 
 the City. Marble palaces, gilded roofs, feast- 
 ing and splendor ; and amidst it all the cry 
 of the poor and the wronged ! There is an 
 oppression on my heart. It seems as if the 
 prayers reached no further than the golden 
 roofs ; but the cries to the Throne in heaven."
 
 208 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " How can I help it ?" Onias replied impa- 
 tiently ; " I at least have spared no cost. I 
 have given alms enough into the Temple 
 treasury to provide a Passover Feast for a 
 score of poor families. I would have given 
 more, but that I feared to make people sus- 
 pect that poor old Onias was after all richer 
 than he seemed. We have a journey to make 
 after the Feast; and not all that come up 
 to the Passover come to sacrifice or to 
 pray." 
 
 For the next week the City was full of feast- 
 ing. It was the great national festival. Of 
 old their ancestors had partaken of the lamb 
 and the bitter herbs, standing, with girded 
 loins, like slaves not yet liberated. Now the 
 poorest Jew reclined at the board " like a 
 king and a freeman." The streets were full 
 of pilgrims, chiefly men. It was a festival 
 which the Romans watched with anxiety, and 
 with which they did not attempt to interfere. 
 We know that they even professed to honor 
 it, by pardoning a criminal " whomsoever the 
 people would." Among all the festive crowds 
 not a Roman soldier was to be found. 
 
 Old Laon watched the motley company 
 which thronged the narrow streets and clus- 
 tered in the porticoes and open courts with 
 curious interest. For the time all intercourse 
 had been suspended between him and the
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 209 
 
 German captives and their new Jewish ac- 
 quaintances. 
 
 Onias dreaded ceremonial pollution, with 
 its attendant inconveniences and expenses ; 
 and Esther was absorbed in the devotions and 
 the sacred memories of the Festival, and in 
 making it as much as she could a festival to 
 some of the poor families who had come up 
 from the country districts, from the forests of 
 Galilee and the hill-country of the South. 
 
 Morning after morning, Laon used to walk 
 up and down the Royal Porch of the Temple, 
 among the three magnificent aisles of Corin- 
 thian columns, the stately cloister large and 
 lofty as our noblest cathedrals. 
 
 " It might be a Temple!" he said. "And 
 it is only a Porch for us who dare not enter 
 the Temple." 
 
 For beyond this magnificent entrance no 
 heathen feet might venture. Just within it 
 rose the richly ornamented stone barrier, with 
 its inscription warning off profane feet. Onias 
 and Esther passed them often at a distance, 
 and entered from the shadows into the light 
 of the sacred courts he into the Court of the 
 Men, she into the Court of the Women, sep- 
 arated by the long flights of marble steps and 
 the Beautiful Gate from the inner courts. 
 
 " A strange people," Laon said to Siward 
 and Callias. " See how they despise us, and
 
 2io VICTORY OF TEE VANQUISHED. 
 
 see how these Romans cringe to them. Not 
 a temple in the world but would be honored 
 by the homage of one of Csesar's legates. In 
 this Temple the presence of Caesar himself 
 would be regarded as an intolerable desecra- 
 tion. The poorest of these beggarly Jews 
 may enter, and the Emperor must keep at a 
 lowly distance outside. And the Romans 
 submit." 
 
 " Yet they scarcely seem one people," Cal- 
 tias said. " See how different their costume 
 is, and even their speech and their complex- 
 ions. Polished Alexandrians, talking Greek 
 as fluently as any Athenian strangers, burn- 
 ed nearly black, from Africa Oriental mer- 
 chants from Babylon or Persia; and among 
 them these half-starved wild men in white 
 clothing, ascetics from their villages by the 
 Dead Sea these Pharisees with their sancti- 
 monious looks, dreading to touch us with the 
 hem of their garments these poor peasants, 
 ill-clad, with hands hard with toil fishermen 
 from Galilee husbandmen from the South 
 shepherds from the Eastern hills. All these 
 sweep past us through the gate we dare not 
 enter, into their own Sanctuary. Surely this 
 is a score of nations, not one nation. What 
 have they in common ?" 
 
 " They have this in common," said Laon, 
 " that scattered as they are voluntarily through
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 II 
 
 every city in the world where there is trade 
 to be done, every one of them is bound to 
 every other by a tie such as binds together 
 no nation on earth, not even some remote 
 mountain tribe which has never seen an in- 
 vader. Elastic to stretch to the ends of the 
 earth, it binds every one of them to this City, 
 this Sanctuary, and to each other." 
 
 " What is the tie?" asked Callias. 
 
 " A common contempt of other races ; a 
 common enthusiasm for their own ; a com- 
 mon history contained in a Book which they 
 look upon as Divine ; a common Hope, which 
 they also look upon as Divine ; common fes- 
 tivals, which commemorate national deliver- 
 ances, drawing them to the Common Temple. 
 Their lawgiver must have been a great pa- 
 triot and statesman, this Moses in whom they 
 trust. I always thought them a wonderful 
 and inexplicable people. But now, first, 
 at Jerusalem, I begin to understand the 
 Jews." 
 
 Yet Siward, walking in silence beside Laon 
 and Callias, had gained through the faith of 
 Esther, a glimpse into the true nature of the 
 bond which united the Jewish nation, deeper 
 than Laon's. 
 
 He had seen afar off a dim vision of the 
 Fountain of Living Waters, whence flowed 
 the Book with its History, the Hope with its
 
 212 
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 inspiration, the intense, unconquerable Pa- 
 triotism. 
 
 For he had found a Jewish heart which be- 
 lieved in the Living God.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 HE Passover Festival was over. The 
 tens of thousands bf pilgrims who 
 had crowded within the walls of 
 Jerusalem, or found a resting-place, 
 like Onias and Esther, in the garden-lodges 
 or vineyard-towers on the hills around, were 
 slowly dispersing, streaming out of every gate, 
 and along every road and footpath, to their 
 homes in distant lands or among the cities and 
 villages of Judasa and Galilee. 
 
 Onias lingered later than the majority of the 
 pilgrims in Jerusalem, until Laon became ea- 
 ger to depart, and Callias, especially, grew 
 impatient to escape from a city in which a 
 statue was regarded as a profanation. 
 
 Once more, at last, the little company was 
 gathered. Laon and Onias, and the women, 
 Siguna and Esther, with little Hilda, on asses, 
 Siward and Callias on foot. 
 
 Across the brook Kedron, then full, and
 
 214 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 murmuring over its stony bed up the steep 
 path to Bethany, bordered with spring flow- 
 ers, and shaded with leafy fig-trees among 
 the olive-groves, through fragrant thickets of 
 flowering myrtle, while from time to time 
 across the way fell the delicate feathered 
 shadow of a cluster of palms. 
 
 Pathetic memories of David the king, with 
 covered head, fleeing from Absalom, were in 
 Esther's heart. 
 
 " O my son Absalom ! my son, my son Ab- 
 salom ! would God I had died for thee, O Ab- 
 salom, my son, my son ! " 
 
 It was no mere echo which those words 
 awakened in her heart. Her whole being 
 vibrated in response. She knew well how 
 much they meant ; and how little ; how " to 
 die," is reversed in meaning when the dearest 
 have died ; how sweet it would have been to 
 have followed her babes whithersoever they 
 had gone; to have been laid, like them, in 
 the Catacombs under the hills of Rome, " in 
 peace ; " like them, to have taken the wings 
 of a dove and flown away, and remained in 
 the wilderness, and been at rest. For, wilder- 
 ness as the world beyond still was to her, a 
 dark land and unknown, she knew, notwith- 
 standing, that all worlds were full of God ; 
 and what her beloved had gone to, dark or 
 bright, she longed to share.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 215 
 
 To Onias nearer memories were more pres- 
 ent. The familiar stories of his boyhood had 
 been of the martyrdoms of his people by. An- 
 tiochus ; of the heroic mother who exhorted 
 her sons to be tortured, and saw them suffer, 
 refusing- to accept deliverance at the price of 
 apostasy ; of the enthusiastic patriotism re- 
 awakened in the wars of the Maccabean bro- 
 thers. Or, nearer still, two tragedies pressed 
 on his memory, which had been stamped on 
 his boyish imagination by frequent repetition 
 until they were as vivid to him as anything 
 he had seen. 
 
 In those fair courts and terraces, now girt 
 with Herod's dazzling cloisters, which lay 
 spread before him as he turned back for a 
 last look from the summit of Olivet, the priests 
 of his people had calmly continued the ap- 
 pointed sacrifices for the nation, while Pom- 
 pey's engines were battering down the tow- 
 ers. Down the precipitous sides of that ra- 
 vine they had been hurled when unable fur- 
 ther to defend the Temple which was at once 
 the citadel of the people and their sanctuary. 
 
 He remembered how in his youth his heart 
 had thrilled with the sense that he would have 
 done and suffered the same. 
 
 But now another scene came back to him 
 with even greater vividness. 
 
 In that city, during the ceaseless civil wars
 
 2i6 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 which had followed the division of Alexander's 
 empire, one old man named Onias had lived a 
 life so high and humble, and so apart from 
 strife, that his prayers were believed to have 
 power like Elijah's, and those who had no 
 ambition for his holiness coveted his interces- 
 sions. 
 
 One of the contending factions both Jew- 
 ish dragged him from his home to pray 
 against the other. 
 
 But the old man had not learned to turn 
 prayers into curses. Quietly he knelt down 
 among the excited mob and prayed aloud: 
 " O God, King of the universe, since on one 
 side are Thy people, and on the other Thy 
 priests, I beseech Thee hear not the prayers 
 of either to the injury of the other." 
 
 The cries of the enraged partizans drowned 
 his voice ; the stones fell thick around the 
 gray head ; the feeble life was easily bruised 
 out of the aged frame, and he fell, one of the 
 few martyrs the world has seen to mercy. 
 
 Among the dark memories of massacre and 
 murder which haunted those valleys and hills, 
 of eight hundred crucified at once outside 
 those walls, of assassination and fratricidal 
 slaughter, the memory of that old man dying, 
 among the stones, for peace, rose before the 
 Pharisee, and for a moment pierced a way 
 for the daylight through the anxious cares
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 I/ 
 
 which were in a gradual manner walling in 
 his soul. 
 
 " If our sons had lived," he said to Esther, 
 " I would have yielded them willingly to such 
 a death as that of this Onias." 
 
 Dusk began to fall when they had crossed 
 the ridge, ere they reached the village of 
 Bethany, in the valley below among the 
 palms and olives. 
 
 Laon wished to remain for the night in the 
 shelter of the village. But Onias refused. The 
 next day was the Sabbath, and he had deter- 
 mined to reach the inn among the hills, half- 
 way on the road to Jericho, so as to bring the 
 next day's traveling within the legal limit of 
 the Sabbath-day's journey. 
 
 Both the old men were immovable. Onias 
 would have yielded anything but a ritual ob- 
 servance for the sake of the protection of com- 
 panions. And Laon would have yielded to 
 anything but what he considered a Jewish su- 
 perstition. So the Jew and the Jewess jour- 
 neyed on alone, whilst Laon and the Germans 
 camped by the village fountain for the night. 
 
 They had not been long out of sight, when 
 on the silence of the evening broke faint dis- 
 tant cries for help. Siward was the first to 
 hear them, and with Callias, and one or two 
 villagers, he pressed on along the wild and 
 lonely road. 
 10
 
 21 8 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 It was some time before they reached the 
 place whence came the cries. The reverbera- 
 tion of the rocky steep had carried the sound 
 far. 
 
 Onias and Esther had indeed fallen among 
 thieves on the wild mountain road to Jericho, 
 with its easy retreat to the desert ; that road 
 which thieves have haunted persistently for 
 thousands of years ; and when Siward came 
 to the spot, the fierce war-cry of the followers 
 of Judas of Galilee, " We have no Master or 
 Lord but God," echoed among- the rocks from 
 a sentinel who was posted in advance to warn 
 the rest. 
 
 On the approach of the rescue, shouting 
 and clashing their arms, the robbers sprang 
 on their horses and fled, leaving their victims 
 free. But Siward found old Onias too be- 
 wildered and distressed to be grateful to his 
 deliverers. At the first moment he did not 
 recognize them, but cried out the more, deem- 
 ing them to be a fresh band of plunderers. 
 
 " I have no more to give," he said in Syriac, 
 wringing his hands. "They have taken all. 
 Do with me what you will. They have taken 
 the savings of my life. Take life too if you 
 will." 
 
 " I had little to lose, sirs," he resumed, re- 
 covering himself as he recognized his friends 
 " little to lose ; but it was my all."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 ig 
 
 But from a rock above came a shout of de- 
 rision. 
 
 " This will teach thee not to lean on an arm 
 of Gentile flesh, brother ! Thanks for thy 
 contribution to our sacred cause. Thy coat 
 weighs heavy, and thou wilt travel light with- 
 out it. Gold thrown into the treasury is never 
 lost. Sow on, old man ; sow again, that the 
 faithful may reap." 
 
 Callias listened, not without a little mali- 
 cious amusement. 
 
 Siward was occupied in restoring Esther to 
 consciousness. She had fallen and been stun- 
 ned. But Onias sat wringing his hands, too 
 dejected to care for anything. 
 
 " Esther, my beloved," were his first words 
 to her when she recovered, " would to Heaven 
 we had both died ! The gold is gone, all, 
 not a piece left. Not one piece ! And I had 
 thought one day to array thee like Esther the 
 queen, and to serve the nation therewith." 
 
 She smiled tenderly at the delusion. But 
 the loss seemed to have added years to his 
 age. And she returned to the village sup- 
 porting on her arm a feeble, tottering old 
 man. 
 
 " Who would have thought it ! Who would 
 have thought it !" he kept murmuring to him- 
 self. " The Lord had indeed forsaken His 
 people. Was I not incurring the danger in
 
 220 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 His service? Is Israel nothing to Him or 
 His own Sabbaths? Our God has forsaken 
 us, Esther. What have we done ? Persecute 
 and take them, for God hath forsaken them." 
 
 " It is not God who hath forsaken us," she 
 said, "it is only the gold." 
 
 But he shook his head, and was not to be 
 comforted. 
 
 Yet in her own heart his words found a 
 deeper echo than she would let him see. 
 
 Thenceforth throughout the journey Siguna 
 observed that* the positions of Onias and Es- 
 ther seemed reversed. Esther rose from her 
 dejection to comfort him. Feeble and sad as 
 she was, she had become the protector, watch- 
 ing and cherishing him with a pitiful mother- 
 ly tenderness. But to Siguna, one evening, 
 the anguish which lay at the root of all this 
 tenderness came out. 
 
 "Oh, German mother!" she said, "he was 
 noble once, kind and generous, when the chil- 
 dren were with us. It is I who have brought 
 this change and curse on him. For my sins, 
 God took the babes. For their sakes, first the 
 gold grew precious to him ; they, yet a thou- 
 sandfold more precious. But since they died 
 his heart has twined around the gold. He 
 is no base miser," she added passionately ; 
 " never believe it. He loves the gold for the 
 power he sees in it to help. He sees it glori-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 2I 
 
 fied with all the love and hopes which once 
 gathered round it. Money is not only the 
 idol of the mean. It is the idol of the hope- 
 less. And sometimes I think if our people 
 lost the great Hope, it might become the idol 
 of our race." 
 
 Siward was listening. She turned to him, 
 and said, 
 
 " Worship any idol but that. Other idols 
 can be broken. This never. Its destruction 
 only makes it dearer. For it is always in the 
 distance before us ; a symbol o/ power, power 
 to do what we will for ourselves and others. 
 When we reach this point, the worshipers 
 say, or that or that ! But the point at which 
 to use it is never reached. We lie down in 
 the dust, and the hand which meant to have 
 used the gold is as powerless as the gold it 
 meant to use. Yet the delusion dies not. 
 Dust to us, it is still a symbol of irresistible 
 power to those who take it from our dead 
 hands. Alas ! this curse and this delusion are 
 on him. But my sins brought it on him ; 
 mine !" 
 
 Siward looked into the pure patient face, 
 and exclaimed involuntarily, 
 
 " Thy sins ! What could they have been ?" 
 
 " I coveted gold first for the babes," she 
 said ; " and then the babes died, and he still 
 coveted the gold for itself."
 
 222 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 11 Underneath the Jewish Temple also, 
 then," thought Siward, " as deep in the heart 
 of the rock beneath the temples of Athens, 
 yawns the cave of the Eumenides, of the 
 avenging goddesses who cannot be appeased 
 or evaded. Everywhere these are dreaded ; 
 are these then the strongest?" 
 
 But he said, 
 
 " Your God also, then, does not forgive !" 
 
 She was silent a moment. Then a faint 
 light broke over her countenance. 
 
 " It is written, ' There is forgiveness with 
 Thee !' " she said. " It is possible that He 
 may be punishing, and yet forgiving ;, punish- 
 ing, that He may be able to forgive. In this 
 hope I live." 
 
 By degrees Onias rallied, and began to fol- 
 low the advice of the robber, " Sow on, sow 
 on again." His mind had run so long in the 
 grooves of commercial calculation, that when 
 left to itself it seemed to calculate mechanic- 
 ally. Before they had left Jericho, with its 
 rose and balsam gardens, shaded on its burn- 
 ing plain by the groves of young palm-trees 
 planted by Archelaus, the son of Herod the 
 Great, he had recommenced negotiations with 
 Laon ; and when they reached the shores of 
 the Lake of Galilee he had contrived a scheme 
 for the sale of arms, which would, he trusted,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 223 
 
 in no distant future restore the losses of the 
 past. 
 
 The villages which bordered the fertile 
 shores of the inland sea seemed to him store- 
 houses of future profit. 
 
 " These Galileans are always turbulent," he 
 said to Esther one evening, as they walked 
 along- the shingly shore ; " before long some 
 new Judas of Gamala is sure to arise. The 
 sight of this new Tiberias of the Idumsean, 
 desecrated with Gentile images and a Roman 
 name, its golden roofs and white porticoes 
 shining over the waters, is it not enough to 
 excite them ? Arms are sure to be welcome ; 
 and prohibited wares can only be safely pur- 
 chased of a fellow-countryman, himself a Jew- 
 ish patriot. These hardy fishermen, more- 
 over, not a few of them are small capitalists. 
 They possess more than one boat. And the 
 lake is a storehouse of wealth inexhaustible. 
 Fish without end ; corn-fields which yield 
 crop after crop ; vineyards and olive-groves 
 on every hill, date-palms on the plain ; orch- 
 ards of citrons and pomegranates bathed by 
 the- lake ; a market at hand in this new city, 
 profane as it is. This land is as the Garden 
 of Eden, Esther. Let us never despond. 
 Some day, who can say what Deliverer may 
 arise for this Paradise ? Judas of Gamala all 
 but succeeded. His followers survive. The
 
 224 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Maccabees came from the north. No one 
 knew of them till they arose. Who knows 
 what may be preparing among these hills 
 even now. This is just the country for a 
 man to arise from. A Paradise to save. The 
 Edomite to dispossess, the traitor flaunting 
 his new Gentile city in the very face of Israel. 
 Wild solitary wildernesses at hand across the 
 water, such as Elijah was trained in. Who 
 knows how near the deliverance may be ! Let 
 us do our part. Let us purchase and sell 
 them the best arms these Gentiles can make, 
 and leave the issue to the Lord of Sabaoth." 
 
 That evening they watched the three stars 
 unveil themselves from the daylight, marking 
 that the Sabbath had begun. 
 
 They rested that Sabbath-day in one of the 
 villages on the shores of the lake, Onias hav- 
 ing refused to lodge within the " Gentile and 
 polluted city of Tiberias." 
 
 They entered a synagogue with a Corin- 
 thian portico, built, it was said, by a Roman 
 soldier, a proselyte. 
 
 Esther sat among the women. Onias was 
 offered the scroll of the law, and asked to read. 
 
 Eagerly she leant forward and listened, as 
 the words came, 
 
 " Surely He hath borne our griefs, and car- 
 ried our sorrows." 
 
 Like the words of a song in a foreign Ian-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 2$ 
 
 guage, almost sweeter for being half under- 
 stood, the wonderful portrait penetrated her 
 heart. 
 
 A Sufferer so beloved of God, what a con- 
 secration for all suffering ! 
 
 And further on, the tender words of the 
 prophet stole in like balm. 
 
 " The Lord has called thee as a woman for- 
 saken and grieved in spirit. 
 
 " For a small moment have I forsaken thee, 
 but with great mercies will I gather thee. 
 
 " O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and 
 not comforted, behold I will lay thy stones 
 with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with 
 sapphires." 
 
 She heard no more. 
 
 Her heart seemed to rise beyond its own 
 sorrows and hopelessness to the sorrow and 
 undying Hope of her people. 
 
 " It must come !" she sang in her heart. 
 " He must come ; the Anointed, the King ! 
 Who knows how near His footsteps may be ? 
 Did Israel know Saul till he was anointed? 
 Did his brethren known David even after he 
 was anointed ? Who knows but, if our ears 
 were opened, we might hear those footsteps 
 even now even here ?'' 
 
 About a day's journey from them, among 
 the western hills, lay the village of Nazareth. 
 10*
 
 226 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 But who thought of turning aside to see an 
 obscure mountain village, not of the best rep- 
 utation ? 
 
 No highway of commerce led through it. 
 No patriotic memories gathered round it. 
 
 Even if they had passed through its upland 
 streets, they might have seen nothing remark- 
 able in the carpenter's workshop there. 
 
 That night Esther could not sleep. A sud- 
 den storm burst on the lake through the ra- 
 vines of the mountains. The white surge 
 gleamed through the night as the waves 
 broke on the shingly beaches or dashed on 
 the cliffs. She sat crouching on the flat house- 
 top under the shelter of a little booth which 
 had been erected for them, and looked out on 
 the storm, until the day began to break ; and 
 then leaning over the low parapet, she watch- 
 ed one solitary fishing-boat struggling with 
 the storm ; now all but hidden under the 
 waves, then emerging, tossed on the white 
 crests, until at last it reached the shore, dash- 
 ed high on a sandy creek, and left there half 
 a wreck, sails torn, masts broken, but safe. 
 
 Slowly the wind lulled, -the clouds vanish- 
 ed, and the sun rose behind the long ridge of 
 the eastern table-land ; the sky was " set with 
 fair colors," and the sea shone like a translu- 
 cent sapphire.
 
 VICTORY OF 2 HE VANQUISHED. 2 2? 
 
 The tangle of images, clustered and inter- 
 twined like the rich vegetation below her on 
 the plain of Gennesaret, in the prophecies she 
 had heard yesterday in the synagogue, came 
 back to her mind, unfolded by the scene be- 
 fore her. 
 
 The Ship tossed in the tempests of the 
 stormy world, dissolving into the city set 
 with sapphires and fair colors ; when and 
 where would the transformation be ? Were 
 the tempests for earth, and the fair colors all 
 for heaven? Or was the dawn even now 
 ready to break on the earth ? 
 
 So she mused watching by the sea of Gali- 
 lee. 
 
 And that same night, in the Temple by 
 the Roman Forum, Clcelia the Vestal was 
 keeping the sacred fire for her people, her 
 heart also faintly stirred by the tremulous 
 murmurs of the morning of which that age 
 was full. 
 
 For the burden of the wickedness of the 
 City on the Seven Hills weighed more and 
 more heavily on her as she understood it 
 more. 
 
 And around the few who watched and 
 prayed lay the great multitudes of the slum-
 
 228 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 bering, revelling, suffering- world, on whom 
 no hope had yet dawned. 
 
 The Hope of the few who looked upward, 
 the hopelessness of the many whom no one 
 had taught to look upward, the universal 
 night of corruption, the uncertain broken 
 murmurs of aspiration from earnest hearts 
 below, the limited but surely growing light 
 of the earlier Revelation from above, all were 
 betokening the breaking of the Day. 
 
 To us who have seen it break ! 
 
 But not yet to those who were still in the 
 twilight. 
 
 The morning and the evening twilight are 
 always hard to be distinguished, by creatures 
 of an hour, whose life is not long enough to 
 see it either begin or end.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 NTIOCH, the third City in the World, 
 the beautiful city, the joyous city, 
 was full of the stir of festivity from 
 end to end. Cassar Germanicus had 
 been laid low by dangerous sickness. He was 
 believed to have recovered, and Antioch, the 
 metropolis of the East, and the residence of 
 the Roman Legate, was pouring out her hun- 
 dreds of thousands to sacrifice at the altars on 
 the hill-sides for the health of the young Cassar. 
 In that delicious climate, living in the open 
 air, under the shadow of the countless porti- 
 coes, or in the race-course and theatres, the 
 idle crowds which thronged the long, broad 
 streets at all times, had only to be stirred by 
 a common impulse in one direction, and the 
 beautiful city became at once the stage of a 
 brilliant and picturesque procession. 
 
 Graceful Greeks, lithe Syrians, stately Per- 
 sians, in all the rich coloring of Oriental cos- 
 tume, glanced in and out of the shadow 
 
 (229)
 
 230 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of the long colonnades. Among them priests 
 with victims, white oxen garlanded, groups 
 of dancers led by cymbals, trumpets, and 
 flutes, choruses of triumphal or comic sing- 
 ers, tro'oped joyously along the long street 
 towards Epidaphne. Along the league-long 
 street, bordered by a marble colonnade with 
 three aisles, they went ; flowers from the 
 the luxuriant gardens showered around their 
 steps, jests flying on all sides among that 
 quick-witted populace (remarkable for its fac- 
 ulty of bestowing characteristic soubriquets) ; 
 by the swift Orontes to the fragrant gardens 
 on the hills, musical with streams, and popu- 
 lous with temples and statues of gods and 
 nymphs ; many of the mortal men and wo- 
 men in the procession, themselves, with their 
 white flowing robes and athletic supple forms 
 trained in the race-course and the circus, as 
 beautiful and graceful as any statue of their 
 gods. 
 
 A miracle of beauty the city was that sum- 
 mer day, with the river girdling it like a sil- 
 ver girdle, the white arches of acqueducts 
 and bridges, and the porticoes of palaces and 
 Basilicas, reflected in the waters, or shining . 
 among the dark foliage ; and all guarded by 
 the walls and towers which scaled the steeps 
 and crowned the heights. Beyond, the rich 
 plain, the blue mountains, sources of cool
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 231 
 
 streams ; over all the glorious sin. shine, bring- 
 ing out every detail of architecture and sculp- 
 ture like delicate ivory carving, and steeping 
 every color in a golden glow ; and through 
 all, the stir of a multitude united for the mo- 
 ment into the true life of a city by a common 
 deliverance and a common joy. 
 
 Suddenly the festivities were checked. 
 The priests had reached the altars at Epi- 
 daphne with the victims, and were commenc- 
 ing the sacrificial rites, when the lictors of 
 Piso, the envious colleague of Germanicus, 
 burst on them, chased away the priests and 
 the garlanded sacrificial oxen with blows and 
 menaces, and dispersed the procession, leav- 
 ing the astonished people to discuss in broken 
 groups what this division among their Roman 
 rulers might mean or portend. 
 
 The festivities which had united the mob 
 into a multitude, thus broken, Antioch re- 
 solved itself again into its elements: elements 
 probably as base and corrupt as have ever 
 been gathered together in any one place. 
 
 Romans delivered from the restraints of 
 Roman duty, Greek mythology transplanted 
 without any of its higher associations, degrad- 
 ed into a mere light tissue of legend, or asso- 
 ciated with the fierce and licentious Syrian 
 nature-worship, native to the place. The de- 
 caying religions of all nations mouldering to-
 
 232 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 gether in a common corruption, a luxurious 
 soil for the vices of all nations to flourish in. 
 Art sunk into a mere appendage of luxury. 
 Nothing serious, but a dark Oriental magic, 
 supposed to be mighty in love-potions or 
 murderous spells ; and the sordid pursuit of 
 wealth. Riches enough to purchase anything ; 
 and nothing too sacred to be sold. An aris- 
 tocracy of mere riches, without patriotism or 
 faith or family honor; a populace such as 
 such an aristocracy creates. 
 
 Old Laon was disturbed at having recom- 
 mended the place to the German captives. 
 
 " There is no quarter of the city fit for a 
 good woman like your mother or a young 
 maiden like your sister to live in," he said to 
 Siward, "except among these hateful Jews, 
 who swarm here, as everywhere else where 
 their honey is to be gathered. They are a 
 set of bigots and misers. But it must be con- 
 fessed they have retained some relics of fam- 
 ily purity. And they alone." 
 
 A stronger reprobation could not pass 
 Laon's lips. " For myself," he added, " I find 
 here a few who love wisdom, and a great 
 many who can talk fine rhetoric about philos- 
 ophy. But women want their philosophy on 
 fire with religion of some kind. And here 
 the fire of religion and the fire of iniquity are 
 the same."
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 HE brief gleam of delusive hope as 
 to the restoration of Germanicus 
 had faded away ; and in his home 
 near Antioch, among the gardens 
 of Epidaphne, the young Cassar lay dying. 
 The pure home of Agrippina and Germani- 
 cus was strangely set ; an island of purity, in 
 that enchanted forest of license and revelry. 
 
 It was October. But the seasons made 
 little difference in the paradise i;i the midst 
 of which he was sojourning. 
 
 Summer could not silence the music of the 
 hundred fountains welling up from their deep 
 rocky sources beneath the hills. Autumn 
 laid a scarcely perceptible touch on the glos- 
 sy foliage of its forests, miles in depth, of 
 ilexes, laurels, and bays, or on the dark mas- 
 ses of its cypresses and cedars. The white 
 marble Temple, in whose jewelled sanctuary 
 the statue of Apollo stretched out arms of
 
 234 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 perpetual longing- for a human love, was sur- 
 rounded by depths of evergreen shade, the 
 perpetually renewed freshness of grass and 
 flowers, and the music of ceaseless revelries. 
 
 But for Germanicus this world had no light 
 or music any more. 
 
 Dark suspicions haunted his sick-bed. The 
 beautiful temples shining amidst the dark 
 foliage, the dances, the processions, the lux- 
 urious festivities among the fragrant gardens, 
 all vanished before the terrors of the great 
 Shadow. The dark chasm of superstitious 
 fear which lay beneath all the brilliant gossa- 
 mers, beneath all the song and dance and fes- 
 tival of that old Pagan faith, yawned before 
 Germanicus in all its blackness. 
 
 To him the flowery Epidaphne was no par- 
 adise of joyous worship, but a sunny portal 
 to the world of shadows. The true shrines 
 of Antioch were to the powers of the under- 
 world ; her true worship was a mighty malig- 
 nant magic ; the white porticoes of her temples 
 were the threshold of a cave darker far than 
 that of the Eumenides beneath the rocky hills 
 of Athens ; for the powers ruling there were 
 no avengers of wrong, steadfast and stern, but 
 abettors of wrong, capricious and unstable, at 
 the beck and call of any malignant heart which 
 was sufficiently like them to propitiate them 
 with the cruel rites they loved.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 235 
 
 To Caesar Germanicus, as he watched his 
 own life slowly and inevitably ebbing away, 
 the world of life and of death must have 
 seemed given over to beings whose nearest 
 types were beasts of prey, ready to fawn on 
 any who would indulge them with enough 
 blood and cruel sport. 
 
 That age, with its light scepticism on the 
 surface, and its despairing unbelief below, was 
 an age of faith in magic, and of feverish curi- 
 osity to obtain glimpses into the future and 
 the unseen ; and the pure life of Germanicus 
 was not free from these superstitious terrors. 
 His own persuasion that poison was given 
 him by Piso, is said to have heightened the 
 relentless violence of the disease. But the 
 poison which he most dreaded was not any 
 mere drug which might work by ordinary 
 means on the body. It was an age in which 
 wives were brought before grave tribunals for 
 administering potions to their husbands which 
 subtly dethroned reason. " And on the floors 
 and walls of Piso's chambers," it was related, 
 " were found the exhumed remains of human 
 bodies, with charms and spells, and the name 
 of Germanicus engraven on sheets of lead ; 
 carcases half burnt, besmeared with gore, and 
 other instruments of sorceries wherewith souls 
 were thought to be doomed to the gods of the 
 under-world."
 
 236 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Germanicus had written a letter from his 
 sick-room solemnly " renouncing the friend- 
 ship of Piso," and, it was said, commanding 
 him to depart the province ; in spite of which 
 Piso was hovering near, like a bird of prey, 
 watching the dying agonies of his victim. 
 
 But the most earnest thoughts of Germani- 
 cus were for his wife and her six children. 
 
 The world above, on which his eyes were 
 closing, was, he knew too well, the empire ot 
 Tiberius Cassar, ever envious and suspicious 
 of him, whose chief ministers were informers, 
 living on the blood of those whom they be- 
 trayed. 
 
 What reason was there to hope that the un- 
 seen world below, to which he was going, 
 would be more justly and evenly ruled than 
 the seen? It seemed to be the empire of 
 Powers envious and capricious, whose favor- 
 ite rites were magic and murder. The Powers 
 who suffered Tiberius to reign, and Piso and 
 Plancina to prosper on earth, would scarcely 
 be more tolerable in their own immediate do- 
 minions. Soon he would be wandering aim- 
 lessly among the dark gods of that lower 
 world. Of that it was useless to think. No 
 wisdom or goodness availed there, or, at all 
 events, no rules which human creatures could 
 comprehend as wise and good. 
 
 But Agrippina and their children would be"
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 237 
 
 still on earth. There, even under the domin- 
 ion of Tiberius, justice might at intervals 
 make her voice heard ; or, at the worst, pru- 
 dence and patience might be of some avail. 
 
 To the few friends who were gathered 
 around him he committed, as his dying in- 
 junction, the sacred duty of avenging his 
 death. 
 
 And touching the hand of the dying prince, 
 they swore they would forego their lives 
 sooner than their revenge. 
 
 For Agrippina he had other counsels. The 
 lofty courage, the imperial stateliness, the 
 severe purity of life, the chaste fervour of 
 affection, which had become her as the wife 
 of the Conqueror, the mother of Caesars, the 
 grand-daughter of Augustus, would avail her 
 nothing now. He conjured her, " by her 
 remembrance of him, by the children who be- 
 longed to them both, to lay aside her indig- 
 nant passion, and bow her spirit to fortune, 
 now enraged against him ; and on her return 
 to Rome, not to irritate those who were 
 stronger than herself, by striving for the mas- 
 tery." 
 
 " So much openly. And more in secret." 
 It was believed that above all other enemies 
 he warned her to dread Tiberius, under 
 whose suspicious eyes henceforth she and her 
 children would have to live, with no mediator
 
 238 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 between ; with no Refuge, that Germanicus 
 knew, above. 
 
 And soon afterwards the last effort of his 
 expiring strength spent in caring for her and 
 his children he died. 
 
 With Tiberius Caesar reigning on earth, 
 where he was leaving all he loved, and the 
 Powers Piso had propitiated by magic reign- 
 ing in that dark lower world he saw before 
 him, it could have been no easy thing for Ger- 
 manicus to die. 
 
 As hard almost for him to die, as for Agrip- 
 pina to live ! 
 
 Once more the people of Antioch were gath- 
 ered together for a solemn rite. 
 
 It was night. 
 
 The princely form of the young Cassar was 
 
 'borne, on the imperial couch of ivory draped 
 
 with purple, from the gardens of Epidaphne, 
 
 through the streets to the Forum of Antioch. 
 
 There, on the square pile of wood, as on an 
 altar, the funeral couch was laid. 
 
 The pyre was lit, as usual, by the nearest in 
 blood, with face averted ; the perfumes were 
 sprinkled ; the flames leapt up around the 
 dead prince, and lit up with their capricious 
 flickering glow the faces of the multitude, for 
 the moment stricken into silence. In a few 
 minutes no visible sign of Germanicus was
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 239 
 
 left, save a few ashes mingled with perfumes 
 and moistened with a libation of wine. 
 
 There was little pomp in the ceremony. 
 The images of his long line of ancestry were 
 far away in Rome ; and there was no funeral 
 procession, no solemn marching of the troops 
 around the pyre, no emancipation of slaves. 
 
 All his children except two one of them 
 the infant born a few months since at Lesbos 
 were then at Rome. And in Syria, it was 
 possible the imperial authority might devolve 
 on the mortal enemy, appointed by Tiberius, 
 who had so relentlessly pursued his steps, and 
 contravened his orders. 
 
 Piso and Plancina, still lingering among the 
 Grecian seas at the Isle of Cos, were over- 
 joyed at the tidings of his death ; made public 
 sacrifices in the temples ; threw off the mourn- 
 ing which they had been wearing for a family 
 bereavement ; accused Germanicus, in a letter 
 to Tiberius, of luxury and insolence ; and 
 hastily collecting an army of deserters and 
 malcontents, returned to the coasts of Syria. 
 
 The public mourning for Germanicus came 
 later. 
 
 Meantime, among the numbers who recalled 
 the dignity and courtesy of his bearing, the 
 princely generosity which delighted in giving* 
 to the needy, the nobler generosity which had 
 been so prompt in rescuing his worst enemy
 
 240 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 from shipwreck, the courteous regard for the 
 customs and beliefs of other races, so graceful in 
 one whose station raised him above criticism, 
 and so rare in a Roman, his courage in the 
 field, his care for his soldiers, his gentleness 
 to the foes whom severity had subdued, his 
 steadfast loyalty to the Emperor, repaid with 
 such ungenerous suspicions, his pure and tem- 
 perate life, his eloquent words, his enthusiasm 
 for the eloquent and beautiful words of other 
 men, his home, worthy of the ideal days of 
 Rome the darkness around him, the bright 
 hopes for the world which had centred in 
 him among all who recalled these things the 
 sorrow was deep and true. 
 
 There were no processions at his funeral, 
 no images of ancestors, no sons with veiled 
 heads or daughters with uncovered faces and 
 dishevelled hair. But the hopes of the whole 
 Roman Empire were veiled at his death. The 
 whole future grew black ; and little as it could 
 lessen her loneliness, Agrippina had a world 
 to mourn with her. 
 
 The German captives, slaves in the young 
 Caesar's household, had also cause to mourn 
 the death of the noblest enemy Rome had sent 
 them. 
 
 They would have mourned more if they had 
 known that, by one of the strange melodra- 
 matic coincidences of history, on the very day
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 241 
 
 on which Germanicus had died, his brave foe 
 Herman, once hailed enthusiastically by his 
 race as their Deliverer, had fallen by the 
 swords of his own people. 
 
 The Deliverer and the Conqueror of the 
 Germans died on the same day ; the Roman 
 Conqueror (it was believed) by the poison of 
 Romans, the German Liberator by the sword 
 of Germans. 
 
 The world, Roman and German, had yet to 
 find her true Conqueror and Deliverer. 
 
 ii
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 N a lowly dwelling in the quarter of 
 Antioch where the numerous Jewish 
 colony lived, as usual congregating 
 as closely as possible, and having their 
 synagogue for the centre of attraction, were 
 gathered together, one evening late in Octo- 
 ber, the German captives Siguna and Siward, 
 with little Hilda, old Laon, Callias, the 
 sculptor, and Onias and Esther, the master 
 and mistress of the house. 
 
 The great sorrow (as usual) had brought 
 other sorrows and separations in its train, and 
 the little company who had grown so familiar 
 with each other, had met for a last interview 
 on the eve of a long parting. 
 
 Siguna alone was to return in the household 
 of Agrippina to Rome. 
 
 Dreading more than separation or death for 
 her daughter the pollution'of one of the great 
 Roman slave-households, the German mother 
 
 (*4)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 243 
 
 had gladly consented to the purchase of the 
 child by the childless Esther. 
 
 A strong affection had grown up between 
 the two women. Siguna felt that to be a bond- 
 maiden in the charge of the Jewess would be 
 a lot nobler than freedom in many a home. 
 And the heart of Esther yearned towards the 
 child who might be to her as her own, in all 
 but the great national Hope, which was 
 centred in the mothers of her race, and in 
 them alone. 
 
 Laon's contract was fulfilled, and he was 
 free. In a short time he hoped, by the aid of 
 Onias' skill in bargaining, and his opportuni- 
 ties for the sale of arms among his turbulent 
 compatriots, to make capital sufficient to pro- 
 vide a refuge "for his foster-child, Clcelia Dio- 
 dora, if fortune should enable him to rescue 
 her. Siward was to use his strong arm for 
 them, and Callias his skill in ornament and 
 design. 
 
 Onias had paid the purchase-money for both 
 Hilda and Siward, from mysterious sources, 
 to which he gave no clue. In a few years it 
 was hoped the brother would work out the 
 ransom of both his sister and himself. 
 
 In the meantime the three were linked to- 
 gether by a common interest, and inspired 
 each by his own individual hope. 
 
 Laon sighed for his foster-child ; Siward for
 
 244 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 liberty for himself, his sister, and his country 
 (not knowing yet how the hopes of the North 
 German tribes had for the time been crushed 
 by the assassination of Herman); and Callias 
 was inspired by a long-cherished purpose, 
 which he had only that evening confided to 
 Siguna. 
 
 His heart was set on making, in some future 
 year, little Hilda his bride. The sister of a 
 brave brother, and the daughter of a goo$ 
 mother, with a dower of sunshine in her fair 
 face, for such a bride he would be content to 
 work and wait his seven years. 
 
 Siguna and Esther held grave debate on the 
 matter. The heart of the German turned to- 
 wards the race which, in the person of Laon, 
 had so befriended her boy ; and to Callias him- 
 self for his courteous bearing to them in their 
 captivity ; whilst to Esther the seven years' 
 service had a patriarchal sanction. That 
 evening, therefore, the mother's consent was 
 obtained ; and little Hilda, unconscious of her 
 dignity, was promised to Callias as his future 
 bride. 
 
 Siguna's heart was relieved for her children. 
 For herself, she had determined her course. 
 She would accompany Agrippina to Rome ; 
 there, as soon as might be, earn her freedom, 
 and return to her children at Antioch. This 
 she had told them all. But only to Siward, in
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 245 
 
 the last hour before her departure, did she 
 confide the immovable purpose which lay 
 deeper in her heart than anything. The first 
 moment she was free she had determined to 
 retrace her steps along the fatal Roman Road 
 to the Lippe Valley, and there to find if Olave 
 the Smith, her husband, still lived. All else 
 in her future must depend on the issue of that 
 search. She would trust no one but herself 
 to make it, not even Siward. Others might 
 *grow too soon discouraged. In her heart only 
 burned that unconquerable instinct which told 
 her that he lived. And if he lived she would 
 find him. 
 
 So the German captive family was again 
 divided. Hilda remained in the household of 
 Esther the Jewess, and Siward in the work- 
 shop of old Laon on the borders of the 
 Orontes ; whilst Siguna went back over the 
 seas to Rome with Agrippina and her children. 
 
 Back to Rome Agrippina and her mournful 
 company went ; to Rome, where, not two 
 years since, the princely form of the young 
 Ceesar in his Conqueror's chariot among his 
 boys had been the glory of the Triumph ; 
 across the seas, with their clusters of thickly- 
 peopled isles, where a few months before 
 every island and every city had sent forth 
 their festive thousands in welcome.
 
 246 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 On their way, by the Asiatic shore, they en- 
 countered the ships of Piso. There was ap- 
 prehension of a battle. But the fleets passed 
 each other with no further collision than bitter 
 words shouted from crew to crew. 
 
 Little indeed could the dread of such hos- 
 tilities have moved Agrippina. In her youth 
 she had stood alone on the side of the Rhine 
 nearest the enemy, to keep the bridge for her 
 husband's legions. And now, although the' 
 love which had kindled the courage was with 
 her no more, the fears of love had perished 
 with it. Henceforth this world had little 
 terrible to threaten her with, unless it were 
 through the children left to her vain and feeble 
 guardianship. 
 
 Slowly she sailed across those peopled seas. 
 A storm had gathered around them, and 
 scattered the ships, when they had left the 
 coast of Italy together. Now no storm hin- 
 dered her. The powers of the under-world 
 had accomplished their worst ; and no " envy 
 of the gods" need lower now, with sudden 
 menaces of tempest, around the widowed 
 princess ; her course was too certainly towards 
 shipwreck, returning to a court .which hated 
 her, with the ashes of her husband. Across 
 calm seas and under the pitiless smile of sunny 
 skies, day after day she advanced to Rome.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 247 
 
 We do not hear that she stopped at one of 
 the places where so short a time ago she had 
 been welcomed with Germanicus. No festive 
 gathering now at Athens ; no fond lingering 
 at Actium over the places sacred to the 
 memory of their common ancestors. 
 
 Only at Corcyra she rested a few days, to 
 calm her spirit, " passionate in sorrow, unused 
 to endure," to restore her enfeebled health, 
 and gather strength to encounter the tide of 
 sympathy and of recollections which awaited 
 her on the Italian shores. 
 
 Tidings must have reached her there how 
 deeply her sorrow was felt at Rome ; how, on 
 a false report of the death of Germanicus, the 
 courts of justice had been dissolved, and pri- 
 vate houses shut up ; how again, on a delusive 
 report of his having recovered, the doors of 
 the temples had been burst open by the 
 throngs of rejoicing worshipers ; and after- 
 wards, in December, the Festival of the 
 Saturnalia had been no festival, for the mourn- 
 ing throughout the city. 
 
 The friends of the family of the Csesar did 
 riot wait for her disembarkation, but hastened 
 to Brundusium, and crowded in ships around 
 her. 
 
 She landed at Brundusium, bearing in her 
 arms the Funeral Urn, the two children who 
 were with her (one an infant in arms) at her
 
 248 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 side. Her other children met her on the 
 shore. 
 
 Before she came in sight, it had been de- 
 bated whether it would be best to receive her 
 in silence, or with any voice of sorrow. But 
 when she stepped on shore, bearing the sacred 
 Urn, her eyes cast down, one groan burst from 
 all ; the weeping of men could not be dis- 
 tinguished from that of the women ; only (it 
 was said) the fresh grief of those who came to 
 meet her was louder than that of those who 
 had been with her, wearied and worn with 
 long mourning. 
 
 The quays, the walls, the roofs of the houses 
 were thronged with a silent multitude, griev- 
 ing with her, " the only true child of Augus- 
 tus, the only relic of ancient virtue left." 
 Never, perhaps, was there a more passionate 
 and genuine popular mourning. For those 
 tears and lamentations were well known to 
 find no favor with the Emperor, or the Em- 
 peror's aged mother. All formal honors had 
 indeed been decreed by Tiberius. The officers 
 of two Praetorian cohorts met her at Brun- 
 dusium ; tribunes, and centurions, were ap- 
 pointed to bear the Urn on their shoulders ; 
 propitiatory sacrifices were offered on the 
 altars of the Dii Manes. But it was observed 
 that neither Tiberius nor Livia, nor (it was 
 believed in consequence of the Emperor's pro-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 249 
 
 hibition) even Antonia, the mother of Ger- 
 manicus, came forth to meet the dead, or to 
 receive Agrippina. The people in every city 
 were impelled by a generous impulse to com- 
 pensate for the coldness of the Emperor. As 
 they passed through town after town, the poor 
 citizens in black, the knights in purple robes, 
 came to meet them ; precious raiment and 
 perfumes were burned in honor of the beloved 
 dead ; whilst from the country districts and 
 the more distant towns the people gathered 
 in throngs. 
 
 So they reached the neighborhood of Rome. 
 Through the many miles of tombs bordering 
 the Appian Way, the procession passed. 
 
 Siguna thought of her own first approach 
 to the city by the Flaminian Way, along the 
 great road from the North. Then all around 
 had been full of triumphal festivity ; Germani- 
 cus and his family themselves the centre of all 
 the life and joy. By the Campus Martius, by 
 amphitheatres and temples, they had ap- 
 proached the Imperial City crowned by the 
 Capitol, and along the Sacred Way had been 
 drawn, to be themselves laid as another tri- 
 bute at her feet. 
 
 Now trumpets, flutes, garlanded oxen, 
 
 festive multitude, all had vanished. And 
 
 slowly the family of Germanicus passed on 
 
 through the tombs, themselves the saddest 
 
 11*
 
 250 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 spectacle of all, no more to lay the wreath of 
 victory on the Capitol, but to lay the Urn 
 with its few light ashes in the Mausoleum of 
 the Caesars by the Tiber. 
 
 Henceforth to Agrippina, from a Triumphal 
 Way, all the way through life had become a 
 Way of Tombs ; shadow after shadow would 
 cross her path, yet scarcely darken it more. 
 
 From the City, the Senate and a great part 
 of the Roman people came forth to meet her. 
 Not in a stately, formal procession, but in 
 broken groups lamenting in low voices to 
 each other, rik men for whom in this death much 
 was lost for ever they entered together the 
 City gates. 
 
 One heart remained little changed. One 
 cold and bitter heart which had been wrap- 
 ped in envious gloom when all Rome was re- 
 joicing with Germanicus the Conqueror 
 was chilled to a deeper darkness by the 
 passionate lamentation over his death. Life 
 has no fields so barren that Envy cannot 
 gather her poisons there. If every shout of ex- 
 ultation in the Triumph of Germanicus had 
 been like a sting to Tiberius, this silence and 
 this passionate mourning pierced him with a 
 deeper wound. 
 
 The day on which the sacred relics were 
 borne to the mausoleum of Augustus was no 
 day of even-voiced, melodious lamentation.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 251 
 
 At one time the crowded streets were "a 
 waste of desolate silences ;" at another, rest- 
 less with bitter wailing-. The Campus Martius 
 (near which, on the banks of the Tiber, the 
 mausoleum stood) was one blaze of light with 
 funeral torches: armed troops, magistrates 
 without their insignia, the people in their 
 tribes, crying that the Commonwealth had 
 fallen, and no hope was left : all hearts burn- 
 ing with love and sorrow for the pure, brave 
 lives so few cared to follow ; for the lost Cas- 
 sar and the mourning Agrippina calling on 
 her as the "glory of the country, the only 
 blood of Augustus," the only type of ancient 
 ideal times left; calling on the gods, with 
 faces turned heavenward, " to preserve her 
 offspring, that they might survive the wicked." 
 A genuine burst of sorrow, regardless of pru- 
 dence, braving the anger of the Emperor ; 
 reve_aling for a moment to that fallen people 
 the ideal they had lost ; revealing in them for 
 a moment, as true sorrow does, the ideal for 
 which they were created. 
 
 It was not Germanicus only the Roman 
 people mourned that day. It was Rome it 
 was Roman honor and purity. It was more : 
 it was a sorrow they had not learned to name ; 
 the source of all darkness worth the name of 
 darkness. It was a lost paradise, lost human 
 happiness, a fallen human race, for which they
 
 252 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 wept. It was Sin. It was the lost ideal of 
 humanity then (unknown to them) being lived 
 into reality again at Nazareth. It was the 
 lost Shepherd, the lost King and Saviour of 
 men. 
 
 But on his icy height Tiberius kept still 
 apart, unwarmed by the sunshine of common 
 men, untouched by their storms of purifying 
 sorrow. And soon from that summit fell from 
 afar on the ears of mortals a hard voice, 
 audible as a trumpet, and inhuman, with no 
 uncertain sound sarcastic, sententious, epi- 
 grammatic, full of unanswerable common- 
 places and unmitigated commonsense. 
 
 " Princes were mortal," it said ; " the State 
 was eternal. It was not unseemly to lament 
 in the first transport of sorrow ; nay, tears 
 were even a relief. But now it was time to 
 compose their minds ; as formerly the divine 
 Julius losing his only daughter, and the divine 
 Augustus deprived of his grandsons, had re- 
 pressed their grief. Often before," it sarcasti- 
 cally suggested, " the Roman people had 
 borne calmly the death of generals. The 
 April spectacles of the great goddess were at 
 hand. Let them resume their amusements !" 
 
 A little later he might have pointed the les- 
 son with his own example, when he replied to 
 a letter of condolence from the Grecians for 
 the death of his own son Drusus, by express-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 253 
 
 ing to them in return his sympathy with them 
 for the death of Hector of Troy. 
 
 Such was the heart to which Agrippina 
 proud, courageous, pure, truthful had to look 
 for protection for herself and her children. 
 Such was the heart of him to whom the Ro- 
 man world entreated to be suffered to erect 
 temples, believing that all power was given to 
 him in heaven and on earth. 
 
 This passionate mourning for Germanicus 
 (in itself, by its implied comparison with him- 
 self, almost a revolt) was scarcely over when 
 an entreaty came from this same Roman 
 people to the Emperor which must have 
 moved him to a cynical smile. The pauper 
 citizens had murmured at the price of corn. 
 Tiberius settled the price of it to the buyer 
 by himself paying the extra price to the corn- 
 dealer. Thereupon the Roman people spoke 
 of his " care of the State " as " divine," invoked 
 himself as " Lord," and once more supplicated 
 permission to call him " Father of the Coun- 
 try." 
 
 Tiberius refused the titles, and sharply re- 
 buked the suppliants. " Speech was difficult," 
 it was said, " under a ruler who dreaded 
 liberty and hated flattery." 
 
 A strange horror mixed with pity almost 
 fascinates the gaze on this cold, calm man, in- 
 capable, it would seem, of joy or of sympathy ;
 
 254 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 but not incapable, as it seemed afterwards, of 
 anguish. Himself compelled to act the prin- 
 cipal part in a world of shows, he hated all 
 shows of grief or joy ; and from his cold 
 height, and with his passionless eyes, gazed 
 through them, or brushed them away like 
 cobwebs. 
 
 Exaggeration was in his eyes a crime, and 
 he lived the centre of a world of the wildest 
 exaggerations. He suffered the senators to 
 talk poetically of " the priests of Mars singing 
 the name of Germanicus among the names of 
 the gods, with dance and striking of shields in 
 the processional Salian hymn ; of placing a 
 curule chair for him at the circus, surmounted 
 with oaken crowns ; or carrying his ivory 
 statue in the Circensian games." He suffered 
 arches to be erected to his memory at Rome, 
 'on the Rhine, on Amanus in Syria, a cenotaph 
 at Antioch, a tribunal at Epidaphne. But 
 when they would have decreed Germanicus a 
 golden shield, of an extra size, as the meed of 
 eloquence, the critical Emperor interfered. 
 " Not larger," he said, " than the shields of 
 others ; for eloquence was not measured by 
 fortune." 
 
 Tiberius even disapproved of exaggeration 
 in plundering the provinces. By his appoint- 
 ment the changes among the governors of 
 Syria were less frequent than usual, on the
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 255 
 
 principle, he said, "that one swarm of flies 
 might be satiated with the blood of the victim, 
 and it was an unnecessary cruelty to drive it 
 away to be replaced by another." 
 
 Of the frightful crimes which are said to 
 have ended his career, there were as 'yet few 
 symptoms. 
 
 Strong, able, clear-sighted, far-sighted, re- 
 jecting sympathy, indignant with infirmity 
 the contrast between Tiberius and Him whose 
 true universal empire was growing irresistibly 
 under his rule, was, perhaps, even stronger 
 then, than in those later days of orgy and vio- 
 lence. 
 
 For the character of the Emperor stood 
 bare in its essence, unconcealed, if unpolluted, 
 by the rank death-growth of after years. 
 
 It was not to one untouched with the feel- 
 ing of our infirmities, tearlessly diverting the 
 mourner from the grave to the " games," in 
 his own sorrow sarcastically rejecting sym- 
 pathy, that all power was given. 
 
 But to One who, when He said, " Weep 
 not," made death give back its prey ; and 
 who, with the sorrow He so soon turned into 
 joy, " wept." 
 
 To One who, indeed, with insight clearer 
 than that of Tiberius, knew what was in man ; 
 knew how the three would slumber, and one 
 betray, and all forsake, yet sought their feeble
 
 256 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 sympathy, and hoped for them through all 
 their Tearfulness ; and before the Father, in 
 the calm intensity of His last prayer, said how 
 He prized their faltering love. 
 
 To Him whose compassion was infinitely 
 tender, because His sight was infinitely clear ; 
 because, through all the deadly intertwining 
 of sin around the inmost heart, He saw that 
 the deadly clasp could be unlocked, and un- 
 locked by love alone ; and loved on, and died 
 for love, and by loving and dying has un- 
 locked that mortal embrace of sin from hearts 
 innumerable, age after age, and has redeemed 
 and liberated them for ever and for ever.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 I GUN A had been entrusted by the 
 Jewess Esther with a packet and a 
 message for her father in Rome. One 
 evening she consulted Clcelia Dio- 
 dora as to the best method of finding the old 
 man, and they came to the conclusion that 
 the venerable Jew who had spoken to Clcelia 
 on the Ccelian Hill might be Esther's father. 
 
 " He used often on summer evenings to sit 
 on a stone outside our garden," Diodora said. 
 " I used to take him a cup of cold water from 
 our well sometimes, and grapes from our 
 vines ; and he used to tell me lovely stories 
 from the history of his people : of good wo- 
 men and their joys and sorrows ; of women 
 brave and heroic as the men, who delivered 
 the land from tyrants ; of a king who had 
 been a shepherd, and was a poet always, by 
 the sheepfold or on the throne, who sang 
 songs to his harp. Strange songs they were, 
 full of longing and love, and overwhelming
 
 258 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 sorrow breaking into rapturous joy. But all 
 the love and longing joy and sorrow were 
 not for earthly love, but for his God. And 
 once the old man told me of a great Hope of 
 their nation, of a Deliverer whom he thought 
 must be close at hand, who might indeed be 
 in the world somewhere even now. I liked 
 to listen. But then Laon told me these Jews 
 have a dark misanthropic superstition, and I 
 might be brought under the spell of it before 
 I was aware. So, since Laon left, I have lis- 
 tened to the old man no more about his re- 
 ligion. Moreover, lately there have been 
 dark rumors about the wicked rites of certain 
 Egyptians, who they say are like these Jews. 
 But now and then I have brought the old 
 man water, or figs and grapes, and sometimes 
 let him talk to me about his family, as he sat 
 outside the garden on the slopes of the Ccelian. 
 He has a daughter in Syria ; and he has spok- 
 en to me of two little grandsons who rest, he 
 says, in the Jewish Catacombs beyond the 
 Tiber. It must be the same of whom your 
 Jewess Esther spoke. This evening, we will 
 creep through the garden door and see if he 
 is there." 
 
 That evening the German mother and the 
 Roman girl, looking out through the garden 
 door, saw a feeble, bent, white-haired old man 
 standing outside. His arms were outstretch-
 
 VICTORY Of THE VANQUISHED. 259 
 
 ed, his face was turned to the south-east, to- 
 wards the Alban hills, where the sunset was re- 
 flected from the height of the old Latin shrine. 
 
 But his gaze was not resting on any Italian 
 hills or any pagan shrines. Beyond, beyond 
 them all, to the sanctuary of his race ; to the 
 hills which stand round about Jerusalem ; to 
 the city where David dwelt, the shrine to- 
 wards which Daniel prayed, the home of his 
 youth ; the centre of the great promises which 
 irradiated the future for him, for Israel, for 
 the nations. 
 
 Beyond, beyond Jerusalem, her hills and 
 her Temple, to Him " from whom cometh 
 help," to Him whom "heaven, and the heaven 
 of heavens cannot contain." 
 
 Cloelia paused reverently when she saw 
 him, and withdrew into the shadow of the 
 gateway. 
 
 " Those old hymns of his people are in his 
 heart and on his face !" she said. " See how 
 it glows with love, and longing, and hope, 
 and joy. Have you ever seen anything like 
 this, Siguna ? Some one that old man loves 
 is in heaven, and he is speaking to him !" 
 
 " Once I saw something like it," Siguna 
 answered, "in Esther. She is his daughter. 
 I am sure of it now. That look in his face 
 has brought out a likeness I might not other- 
 wise have seen. Once, by the Sea of Galilee,
 
 260 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 I saw her look just so. There had been a 
 festival in their synagogue that morning, she 
 told me afterwards ; and a present given of a 
 fair covering for their Sacred Book, on the 
 first birth-day of the son of a rich Galilean. 
 
 " I found her standing thus at sunset by a 
 little lonely village Proseucha, a Jewish place 
 of prayer. The waves were rippling on the 
 shingle, and all the sky was glowing behind 
 the western hills. She was looking heaven- 
 ward, and the tears were streaming over her 
 face. But she was speaking to some one she 
 knew well ; as he is now. And on her face 
 were the same awe, and love, and longing. 
 Scarcely, I think, the same joy. Afterwards, 
 when she saw me, she said, ' They will not 
 return to me, but I shall go to them ; ' and 
 then looking up again : ' There is forgiveness, 
 forgiveness with Thee !' Forgiveness! I have 
 always remembered, because of her face ; and 
 because the word was so strange to me. Ven- 
 geance, justice we hear of from the gods. 
 Perhaps of penalties remitted. But ' forgive- 
 ness ' seemed something altogether new. For- 
 giveness such as this. The penalty had been 
 inflicted to the utmost on her. Her children 
 were gone from her for ever. She had noth- 
 ing to ask ; she had nothing to lose. Yet 
 she spoke of forgiveness as of something 
 which filled her with unutterable longing. I
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 6l 
 
 wondered long; until one day I asked her, 
 ' What is this forgiveness, this joy for which 
 you long ? ' ' 
 
 " ' Do you not know ? ' she said. ' Had you 
 never a mother that you grieved? never a 
 friend or a child who grieved you ? The joy 
 of forgiveness? It is being forgiven. It is 
 being welcomed back to the heart we have 
 grieved. When David the king cried on God 
 for mercy, the child was dead. He did not 
 pray for the blow to be averted. It had fallen. 
 He prayed for the sin to be forgiven. He 
 prayed for the old loving-kindness to be felt 
 in his heart once more.' 
 
 " That was another new word to -me," Si- 
 guna added. " Sin. Not crime and ven- 
 geance. But sin and forgiveness. It was 
 new and strange. She talked to me often, 
 and sometimes I think I understand a little. 
 But I understand best when I think of the 
 look that evening on her face, as now on his." 
 
 In a few minutes the old man took his staff 
 and sank down on the seat, and then they saw 
 how feeble and tottering the thin frame was. 
 
 Gently they drew near to him. 
 
 " I think it is for thee I have a message," 
 Siguna said ; " from Esther the Jewess." 
 
 The old man's dark eyes brightened and his 
 brow flushed as he scanned the kind, honest 
 face.
 
 262 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " My child !" he murmured. 
 
 " She is at Antioch, with Onias her hus- 
 band," Siguna answered ; " and she bade me 
 say there is a welcome for thee under their 
 roof; and to pray thee from her and Onias to 
 come." 
 
 The old man clasped his hands. 
 
 " Is Onias then rich again ?" he said ; " and 
 has he forgiven me ? I made a foolish con- 
 tract once," he added humbly, " and lost 
 much money for him as well as for myself 
 and Esther. I did foolishly. And I thought 
 he would never have forgiven." 
 
 " Esther the Jewess bade me say Onias de- 
 sires thy- presence under his roof. Things 
 have not gone altogether well with him. He 
 was robbed once near Jericho. And look- 
 ing round for cause why he should be thus 
 punished, he remembered thee, and some 
 ancient commandment about parents, with 
 a promise, and thought perhaps it might 
 bring down a blessing on his roof if he took 
 thee home and suffered thy daughter to 
 cherish thy old age. This from Onias. And 
 she bade me add, that the deepest desire of 
 her heart is to see thee and to have thy bless- 
 ing again before she dies." 
 
 " His ways are above our ways," said the 
 old man, rising reverently. " I am driven 
 from Rome. Four thousand of us forced into
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 263 
 
 the Roman service, and exiled to Sardinia to 
 root out the robbers on the mountains there, 
 and (the Romans hope) to perish in the strife 
 or by the cruel climate. These are our young 
 and strong. The rest we, the aged and in- 
 firm are all banished instantly from Rome. 
 And now once more my daughter's home is 
 open to me !" 
 
 " Lady," he added, turning to Clcelia, " I 
 came to-night to thank thee for thy kindness 
 to an outcast old man, and to pray thee not 
 to believe the evil they speak of me and of 
 my people. We are driven from the city be- 
 cause of the iniquities of certain Egyptian idol- 
 aters. We Jews confounded with the Egyp- 
 tians, wjio hate us ! we servants of our God 
 condemned with these worshipers of abom- 
 inations ! No court to plead in, no judge to 
 appeal to ! We deserve it perhaps for other 
 sins. But thou, I pray, confound us not with 
 those who hate us and baspheme our God. 
 It is hard to be execrated for worshiping 
 Him only. But to be cast out with those 
 who hate Him, this is bitter indeed. Believe 
 it not." 
 
 " I believe nothing evil of thee," Clcelia said. 
 And Siguna added, 
 
 " Come hither once again to-morrow, that I 
 may bring thee the money thy daughter sent 
 to help thee on the way."
 
 264 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 But on the next evening no old man was to 
 be found on the stone seat, nor anywhere on 
 the hill-side. Nor on the next, nor even on 
 the next again. 
 
 The following day was the day for the exe- 
 cution of the decree of exile. By the evening 
 of that day not a Jew nor a Jewess was to be 
 left in Rome. 
 
 Siguna resolved to lose rfo more time. That 
 very evening she searched among the Jewish 
 dwellings in the valley of Egeria ; but it was 
 not until the next day that, at last, in a poor 
 shed in the Jewish quarter beyond the Tiber, 
 she found the old man, lying, forsaken and 
 helpless, on an old embroidered rug of Syrian 
 workmanship. Beside him were bread and a 
 cruse of water, and some of the grapes Clcelia 
 Diodora had given him on the last evening 
 they had seen him. 
 
 It was plain that the decree of exile would 
 never be enforced on him. 
 
 " I shall not see Antioch ! " he said to Sigu- 
 na, whose quiet motherly demeanor made it 
 seem quite natural she should be beside his 
 sick-bed. Kneeling on the ground beside 
 him, she folded her veil into a pillow for him, 
 choosing the freshest grapes to place within 
 his parched lips. 
 
 " Now you are come," he murmured, " I 
 shall die content. You will take my child a
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 265 
 
 message. Tell her I blessed her always, every 
 day, a hundred times a day ; and now at last 
 more than ever. Tell her God will bless her, 
 is blessing her always, though not in ways we 
 choose." 
 
 Siguna obtained permission to stay with the 
 dying man. That night there were wailings 
 and bitter partings and an eager stir of pre- 
 paration in the streets, and the ceaseless pass- 
 ing of men and women laden with all they 
 could carry of their household furniture. 
 The next evening there was dead silence all 
 around. Empty houses and empty streets ; 
 and the German captive left alone with the 
 Jewish exile, following him as far as she might 
 on that bitter path of everlasting exile from 
 all familiar things and dear faces which was 
 all she knew certainly of death. 
 
 Occasionally the old Jew's heart was light- 
 ed up by a hope she knew not. He spoke of 
 a Resurrection at a Last Day. But it did 
 not seem to be from this that the real light 
 came which sometimes kindled his failing 
 eyes. Between him and that Last Day lay a 
 long unknown sleep. Between this Egypt 
 and that Promised Land lay a tract of unex- 
 plored wilderness no one who had traversed 
 it had ever returned to speak of. What 
 dreams might be in that sleep, what dragons, 
 and deeps, and mountains burning with fire, 
 12
 
 266 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED, 
 
 and bitter Marahs, and waste trackless soli- 
 tudes, he knew not. 
 
 Only he knew that God was there here, 
 there, everywhere. " Even there shall Thy 
 hand be ; " not to crush but to uphold, not to 
 drive but to " lead." 
 
 Sometimes indeed his faith grew dim ; and 
 then a shadow rested on him, darker, it seem- 
 ed to Siguna, than any she had seen on dying 
 faces before. 
 
 He spoke of sin, of transgression, with a 
 horror which communicated itself to her, 
 She remembered what she had heard of the 
 crimes of the banished Egyptians, and at 
 times felt as if she must be in the presence of 
 some fearful criminal ; until at length she 
 gathered courage to ask him gently if he had 
 any great crime on his conscience, and if any- 
 thing could be done to expiate it, or to remedy 
 the consequence. Had he wronged any one? 
 Could she at least say he had confessed and 
 asked forgiveness, that at least he might rest 
 in the grave ? " 
 
 The old man shook his head. 
 
 " Not wrong, nor crime ! " he said. " Sin ! 
 Against Him I have sinned, and before Him 
 I shall stand ! Thou requirest truth within, 
 within. And within me is sin." 
 
 It was the word Esther had used, the ter- 
 ror she had felt by the Sea of Galilee, strange
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 267 
 
 to the German matron. She could only think 
 of some wrong done to men, or some trans- 
 gression of ritual which might have offended 
 the gods. 
 
 " Can I tell thy child to have expiations, 
 libations, sacrifices made for thee ? " she said. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " I know Esther would do anything for me," 
 he said with moistened eyes. " But no, there 
 is only One. Wash me, purge me, and I shall 
 be whiter than snow. There is forgiveness 
 with Thee forgiveness." 
 
 " Forgiveness ! " Again Esther's word, and 
 again on the face of the dying man something 
 of the awe and light on hers. 
 
 Then again dim, mournful, dying words 
 from the histories of his ancient people came 
 back on him, as his spirit shivered in that 
 same awful shadow within which they had 
 first been uttered. 
 
 " Shall the dead praise Thee," he murmured, 
 " or they that go down to the pit ! I said, I 
 shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the 
 land of the living. I shall behold man no 
 more. The grave cannot praise Thee. Death 
 cannot celebrate Thee. They that go down 
 into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth. Can- 
 not hope for Thy truth ! " he murmured. 
 " Will even that be lost there ? Shall my 
 people be saved, and I not see it ? Shall the
 
 268 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Redeemer come to Sion, and I not know it ? 
 ' Arise, shine, for thy light is come ! ' So near, 
 so near, O my God, to the brightness of Thy 
 coming. And yet must the shadow come first, 
 and no light ever pierce it for me ! " 
 
 Then he would add, 
 
 " Perchance she will see it my Esther, my 
 child ! " 
 
 And then, 
 
 " If it tarry, wait for it. It will surely come. 
 It will not tarry. A thousand years in Thy 
 sight are but as yesterday. Couldst Thou not 
 have spared me one of Thy moments, to see 
 the morning break? the morning without 
 clouds ! I had thought He would not let me 
 die until it broke." 
 
 Then turning once more to the great Hope 
 of his people, 
 
 " This is our God we have waited for Him. 
 And He will save us. Yet, yet shall this song 
 be sung in Zion." 
 
 And with the hope which led him from self 
 to God, once more the light broke in on his 
 own heart, 
 
 " Shall not the Judge of all the earth^ do 
 right, with me, even with me ! " 
 
 And again, 
 
 " I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength. I 
 shall yet praise Him who is the health of my 
 countenance and my God."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 269 
 
 Patiently the German captive watched be- 
 side him, wondering at this conflict and com- 
 munion with One unseen, yet so trusted and 
 loved. 
 
 Death was evidently dying to him. No 
 divine word from human lips had yet dissolv- 
 ed its terror. 
 
 The future was evidently dim to him. But 
 an inextinguishable light burned on through 
 all the darkness. 
 
 God, trusted, feared, known, loved, was 
 with this departing one. Not so much a hope 
 of immediate immortality sustained him, nor 
 visions of a bright world beyond this ; but one 
 eternal, glorious, sustaining Presence, shining 
 through all worlds, shining through all bar- 
 riers between, and, when he could look at it, 
 not so much promising immortality as obliter- 
 ating death with the deathless light of the 
 Divine countenance. 
 
 He made her promise to have his body laid 
 among his people in the Jewish Catacomb. 
 He showed her the little bundle of spices his 
 people had left beside him to embalm him as 
 the manner of the Jews is to bury. 
 
 And, mingled with strange words in a 
 foreign tongue, which sounded to her like 
 deep murmurs of some subterranean river, 
 she heard him say among his last audible 
 speeches, '
 
 270 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " I will lay me down in peace and sleep." 
 
 And again, 
 
 " Oh, had I the wings of a dove ! Then 
 would I flee away and be at rest." " I shall 
 be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness. 
 Satisfied." 
 
 And last of all, 
 
 " Lay me down and sleep, in peace, in 
 peace." 
 
 When, in faithful fulfilment of his last re- 
 quest, she went to see him laid in the Jewish 
 Catacomb, among the symbols on the tombs 
 there she saw many times on the walls the 
 picture of a dove about to take flight, with an 
 olive branch in its mouth. And among the 
 inscriptions she saw again and again, 
 " Peace." " In peace." 
 
 She came away, pondering many things in 
 her heart ; thinking of the old man's weary 
 spirit, and wondering whether it had indeed 
 found the wings it longed for, and was at rest. 
 
 Often she and Clcelia Diodora spoke to- 
 gether of those things, and wondered what 
 they meant. 
 
 And often the deformed girl longed to speak 
 of them to her sister the Vestal ; but she 
 thought of Laon, and did not dare.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 LOWLY the coils twined closer and 
 closer around Agrippina and her 
 children, slowly, but never relaxing-. 
 It does not seem to have been so 
 much a deliberate purpose of destroying her, 
 on the part of Tiberius, as a sleepless, pas- 
 sionate fear which possessed him ; a weak 
 will in the place of power perpetually chafing 
 against a strong will in the place of depend- 
 ence. The repulsion of a suspicious, timid, 
 subservient nature, with an instinctive prefer- 
 ence for subterranean and crooked ways, from 
 a nature courageous, frank, straightforward, 
 and little able to stoop. 
 
 It was no strong paternal affection for his 
 son Drusus which made him thus jealous of 
 the representatives of Germanicus. He chose 
 at last Caligula, one of Agrippina's children, 
 as his successor, in preference to his own 
 grandson. 
 
 Nor were this distrust and jealousy only fed 
 
 (271)
 
 272 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 by the intrigues of rivals. However dili- 
 gently fanned by his minister Sejanus, and by 
 others who had a strong personal interest in 
 Agrippina's ruin, the flame burned on when 
 Sejanus and those who had nourished it were 
 gone. 
 
 It was harder for Agrippina to fulfil the 
 dying commands of Germanicus than for his 
 friends. On them he had enjoined vengeance ; 
 on her submission. They had well-nigh the 
 whole Roman people on their side in calling 
 for vengeance on his murderers. But for 
 Agrippina to lay aside her proud, unyielding 
 character was not so easy, when the affection 
 to which her pride had delighted to bend, and 
 the serene, even temper, the kindly, genial 
 character which had softened hers, were taken 
 from her. 
 
 Nor was it easy for her to live in depend- 
 ence on the Empress-mother, who had many 
 a womanish grudge against her from of old, 
 and who persisted in shielding Plancina, the 
 proud wife of Piso, from the sentence of the 
 law and the vengeance of the people, under 
 her own personal friendship. 
 
 Yet Agrippina lived to prove that even the 
 guardianship of the Empress Livia, cold and 
 comfortless as it was, had sheltered her from 
 that fiercer passion of jealousy and fear which 
 burned against her in the Emperor's heart.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 273 
 
 Few things are more tragical than the his- 
 tory of the fourteen years of Agrippina's 
 widowhood. 
 
 To be her friend was to be a mark for the 
 Emperor's ravens the informers who lived 
 on the destruction of their victims ; a mark, 
 as it must have seemed, for fate itself. 
 
 Drusus, the son of Tiberius, had shown a 
 kindly interest in her. He was murdered, 
 through the perfidy of his wife, the sister of 
 Germanicus. 
 
 Silius had rendered signal service to the 
 State by quelling a wide-spread and perilous 
 revolt in Gaul. But his wife was Agrippina's 
 friend. The informers attacked him ; he was 
 condemned, and perished. 
 
 The highest station, even imperial blood, 
 could not protect those who were known to 
 be attached to her. 
 
 Yet, surrounded as she was by malignity, 
 treachery, and vice, it is a strange testimony 
 to the power of conscience enforcing homage 
 to virtuous life, that calumny never dared 
 assail her purity. 
 
 Once we hear that, ever vehement, and then 
 in a flame on account of the peril of her kins- 
 woman Claudia Pulchra, she rushed unbidden 
 into the Emperor's presence when he hap- 
 pened to be sacrificing to the deified Augus- 
 tus. 
 
 12*
 
 274 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " Vain it is," she said, " to offer victims to 
 the divine Augustus, and to ill-treat his chil- 
 dren. Not into those dumb effigies is the 
 divine spirit transfused. See before you his 
 true image, sprung from his celestial blood, 
 living to understand and to suffer, a suppliant 
 low at your feet." For her sake, she said, 
 Pulchra was attacked ; for loving her almost 
 to adoration, forgetful of what others had suf- 
 fered for the same crime. 
 
 The sudden outburst for once startled the 
 bitter dread and jealousy of the cautious 
 Emperor from its hiding-place into voice and 
 daylight. 
 
 " It was no wrong to her," he said, quoting 
 a Greek verse, "that she did not reign." 
 
 And from that time, it is said, he never 
 risked another conversation with her. 
 
 So she lived on through weary year after 
 year, under the roof of a man who seems to 
 have looked on her as a kind of embodiment 
 of the hatred of the Roman people for him- 
 self, of that wolf which, all his life through, 
 he held with trembling hands by the ears. 
 
 The traitors who embittered the Emperor's 
 suspicions against her, at the same time in- 
 stilled into her open and unsuspicious nature 
 dark fears of him. 
 
 Not in Antioch or Epidaphne only, it was 
 suggested, could the Emperor find poisoners
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 275 
 
 and poisons to deliver him from too popular 
 guests and kinsfolk. 
 
 The last glimpse we have of her in the pres- 
 ence of Tiberius, is sitting at his table speech- 
 less and motionless, refusing to touch any of 
 the viands there ; until at length the Emperor 
 himself presented some apples to her with his 
 own hand, when (acting, according to her 
 wont, on the impulse of the moment) she 
 handed the fruit untasted to her servants. 
 
 The large keen eyes of the Emperor coolly 
 observed the action, so significant to all pres- 
 ent. He made no open comment, but turning 
 to the Empress-mother, who reclined at the 
 table near him, he said, " It could be no won- 
 der if he dealt more severely with one who 
 pretended to believe him a poisoner." 
 
 Whereupon throughout the city the rumor 
 spread that " her departure from the world 
 was fixed ; it would not be dared publicly, but 
 some secret method would be found." 
 
 It seems, nevertheless, as if she honestly 
 tried to fulfil the command of her husband. 
 
 She made no melodramatic display of her 
 wrongs ; all the ingenious endeavors of pre- 
 tended friends to induce her to make a public 
 appeal to the people, to embrace the statue of 
 her forefather, the deified Augustus, before 
 the multitudes in the Forum, and so claim the 
 protection of the Senate and the people, failed.
 
 276 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Perhaps, with her true and intense character, 
 she knew too well what a shadow the Roman 
 Senate and people had become. 
 
 Nor would she fly, as she was falsely coun- 
 selled, to the armies in Germany, the scene of 
 her heroic actions in her happy days, and cast 
 herself and her children on the generosity 
 of the army her husband had commanded. 
 Probably she had also learned how a few 
 years, in the ceaseless flowing away of life, 
 suffice to change a body of men bearing the 
 same name ; how " we step into the same 
 rivers, and do not step into them." The vet- 
 erans who had pressed the hands of her hus- 
 band on their toothless gums, and opened the 
 scars of unjust wounds to his ey^es, to show 
 how long and hard had been their service, had 
 passed beyond earthly reward. The legions 
 whom she had rescued on that further bank 
 of the Rhine, standing on the post of danger 
 by the bridge she had saved to welcome 
 them, were no longer there except in name. 
 The men who had composed them, who had 
 gloried in her husband's courage and majestic 
 bearing, whose wounds she had cared for, to 
 whom with her own hands she had given food 
 and clothing, were scattered throughout the 
 empire, in Egypt, Syria, Gaul, or Mauritania. 
 
 There was no refuge for her on earth. 
 
 The god of the Roman earth, in whose
 
 VICTORY OF TEE VANQUISHED. 277 
 
 august presence she lived, who had at length 
 permitted a temple to be erected to him at 
 Sm}^rna (reluctantly according this grace to 
 Smyrna in preference to twelve Asiatic cities 
 who supplicated for the honor), was no " un- 
 known god " to her. 
 
 Living under the shadow of his angry and 
 averted countenance so many solitary years, 
 she found that his departure to Capreae brought 
 no lessening of the shadow to her. 
 
 Seven years after the death of Germani- 
 cus (A. D. 25), Tiberius left his palace on the 
 Palatine, and Rome itself, never to enter it 
 again. 
 
 Three years after this the Empress-mother 
 died. With her fell the last shelter of Agrip- 
 pina and her children. The habitual deference 
 to his mother's wishes buried with her, the 
 Emperor was left without human relationship 
 to restrain him, as he had long been without 
 one human affection to ennoble him. 
 
 In a brief time after the Empress' funeral, 
 which her son did not attend, the servile Sen- 
 ate was thrown into perplexity by a letter 
 from the Emperor, accusing Agrippina and 
 her favorite son Nero as persons dangerous 
 to the State. 
 
 Still, " a haughty countenance and an un- 
 conquerable spirit" were all the accusations 
 he dared bring against the widowed princess.
 
 278 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Worse than this, while she lived, he never 
 dare say of her. 
 
 Once more the people, moved with a 
 generous impulse, besieged the Senate with 
 appeals for the wife and children of the young 
 prince they had loved and mourned. They 
 bore the images of Agrippina and her son to 
 the Senate. " The letters from Tiberius were 
 forged !" they cried. " The prince would never 
 thus plot the ruin of his house !" 
 
 But from the twelve villas on the island of 
 Capreas, from that infamous seclusion to which 
 the god of Rome had withdrawn himself, came 
 a repetition of the accusations, and a rebuke 
 to the people and the Senate. 
 
 Such a voice from amidst the thunders, 
 neither people nor Senate dared resist. 
 
 The young princes were imprisoned. And 
 the mother was banished to the island of Pan- 
 dataria, the convict settlement of the empire 
 for dangerous and illustrious criminals. 
 
 This was in the year of our Lord 30. 
 
 The slow years were wearing on. Eleven 
 had separated Agrippina from Germanicus. 
 Three more, and the " haughty countenance 
 and unconquerable spirit " would affront the 
 Emperor no more. 
 
 Wearily meanwhile had these years passed 
 for Siguna the German captive, seeing around
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 ?g 
 
 her so much wrong that she could not redress, 
 so much sorrow that she could not comfort, 
 with the longing of her heart to return to 
 her country and search for Olave unfulfilled. 
 
 Vainly had she sought tidings from band 
 after band of Northern captives brought to 
 Rome after the suppression by Silius of the 
 revolt in Gaul. Her very fidelity had delayed 
 her liberation, by making her services indis- 
 pensable. Still that purpose was before her, 
 to be accomplished with the first breath of 
 freedom. 
 
 In her appearance those ten years had 
 wrought little change. The golden threads 
 of the hair had turned to silver. The wistful 
 sadness had deepened in the soft blue eyes, 
 and tears had dimmed them. But she was 
 still the same fair, tall, erect, matronly woman, 
 with the welcoming motherly look in her eyes 
 which drew the little children to her, as if they 
 felt near her the soft brooding of enfolding 
 wings. 
 
 On Clcelia Diodora also years had made 
 little outward alteration. 
 
 The old anxious look, which had been so 
 painful on the childish face, no longer seemed 
 so unnatural. The depth of the large thought- 
 ful eyes had lost something of that weird, be- 
 wildered, preternatural wonder, as of an ex- 
 iled spirit, never to be naturalized on earth ;
 
 2 8o VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 partly because the anxiety had been turned 
 into a natural channel through her love and 
 solicitude for her sister. 
 
 For on Clcelia Pulchra these years had 
 wrought a marked and mournful change. She 
 had passed from the second decade of her 
 Vestal life to the third, from the years of more 
 active service to those of instruction. The 
 aged " Occia, who had for seven-and-fifty 
 years presided over the Vestals with the 
 greatest sanctity," had passed from among 
 them. Those who had welcomed Clcelia 
 Pulchra as a little child, and called her "Fair," 
 and cherished and taught her, were fast glid- 
 ing into decline. She had come to the prosaic 
 levels of middle-age into the disenchantment 
 of its colorless daylight, while still a long pos- 
 sible tract of weary years lay before her. At 
 seven-and-twenty Clcelia the Vestal felt as if 
 a whole life lay behind her, and before her 
 another life as long, with no change to break 
 and no interests to fill it. 
 
 Patiently she still went about her daily 
 ministries in the temple. But the roof of the 
 world had become lower and narrower to her 
 year by year. The Rome where Tiberius 
 reigned, and the Senate and people which 
 could rise with womanish shrieks of entreaty 
 for Agrippina's rescue, and yet let her perish, 
 and abjectly supplicate her oppressor to be
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 28 1 
 
 permitted to worship him, the people one of 
 whose chief reproaches against the Emperor 
 was that he was too " morose" to delight 
 sufficiently in the slaughter and torture of the 
 gladiatorial games, was scarcely a satisfactory 
 Patria for which to sacrifice youth and beauty 
 and life. 
 
 Was it for this the waters had been kept 
 fresh and pure beneath the rock-arches of the 
 Alban hills ? to be poured on such a barren 
 waste of irremediable corruption as this ? 
 
 And, more terrible still, with the continued 
 disenchantment of earth came deeper doubts 
 as to heaven. 
 
 What was to assure her that those stars she 
 had once fondly thought of as dim hearth-fires, 
 heavenly Vestal shrines, were not fed by hands 
 as weary, for ends as vain, as this altar she 
 tended on earth? What was to assure her 
 that they were hearth-fires at all ; that there 
 was any focus, any living hearth, any loving 
 heart at the core of the world ; that the uni- 
 verse was not as Rome, governed by a Power 
 which scorned love, and cared not for homage, 
 and knew not pity a clear, passionless brain, 
 which subdued mutinies, and saw through all 
 shows, itself included, and doled out daily 
 doles of corn to a pauper world, and was 
 moved by nothing, unless by envy of anything 
 too high, and fear of anything too strong ? If,
 
 282 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 indeed, these darker tales of foul deeds, on 
 Olympus and on Caprese, were the inventions 
 of a depraved age ! 
 
 What was to assure her that even a brain, 
 even clear, passionless intelligence, was at the 
 core of the world, and not merely clear, im- 
 passive Fire, mighty to warm and to quicken, 
 or to scorch and consume, entirely indifferent 
 and unconscious which it accomplished ? As 
 the fire she tended was unconscious whether 
 it cooked a beggar's onions, or glowed on the 
 sacred shrine of Vesta, or burned down, as it 
 had lately done, a hundred houses on the 
 Ccelian Hill. 
 
 Thus the hopeful, upward look passed from 
 Clcelia Pulchra's eyes, and the calm, joyous 
 light from her brow, and the buoyancy from 
 her step. 
 
 The faultless beauty of her features re- 
 mained, and the dignity of her bearing, but 
 there was nothing to indicate the enthusiasm 
 of her early days, when patriotism had been 
 to her a passion, and religion a fervent flaming 
 up of her whole being. Illusions had van- 
 ished ; and no sweet glow of human affection, 
 no high realities of divine love, replaced them. 
 The glow, the warmth were gone ; and, in 
 consequence, the purity seemed the mere in- 
 evitable whiteness and changelessness of a 
 marble statue.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 283 
 
 Except to Clcelia Diodora, her sister. With 
 her the old life of tender protecting affection 
 flowed on, so that the deformed girl still saw 
 in her the beautiful fervent being who had 
 been the adoration of her childhood, only 
 dearer by a deepened pity for the sorrows of 
 the world, and by the deepening shadow of 
 the years which the poor girl felt too plainly 
 were bearing them on to separation and 
 death. 
 
 The old home of her house had been destroy- 
 ed in the great fire which laid the Coslian waste. 
 Her parents had died, and the orphan girl 
 now lived in a room near the temple, on a 
 pension given to her, among other noble 
 maidens, by the bounty of the Empress- 
 mother. 
 
 From time to time tidings and fatherly 
 messages had come from Laon, with gifts. 
 But he knew the sisters would never endure 
 to be separated, and as yet his workshop had 
 not so prospered as to permit his returning to 
 live at Rome, near his foster-child. 
 
 With Sigunathe sisters kept up an affection- 
 ate intercourse. 
 
 And it was a further narrowing and chilling 
 of their small world of affection, when at last 
 the breaking up of the persecuted Princess 
 Agrippina's household set the German captive 
 free to go on that quest in the far North which
 
 284 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 seemed to the Roman sisters wild and ad- 
 venturous and shadowy as the descent of the 
 pious ^Eneas among the unsubstantial shades 
 of the under-world.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 T Antioch, with Siward and Hilda, 
 these ten years had been years not 
 of fading but of unfolding : with Si- 
 ward from youth to manhood, from 
 visions into steady work of preparation ; with 
 Hilda from the child's dream of the world 
 within the folded blossom, to the flower open- 
 ing in a world of sunshine. 
 
 At first, when the tidings of the death of 
 Herman reached Siward, it was to him as if 
 the whole world had shrunk and, shrivelled 
 together, so hopeless seemed the liberation 
 without- the Liberator, the freedom of a 
 people who had assassinated him who would 
 have set them free. 
 
 Unconsciously to himself, the Law and 
 Order of the Roman world had become part 
 of his being, and he felt freedom without obe- 
 dience to be as impossible as a building with- 
 out architectural lines, that is, all liberty 
 worth the name ; living freedom, freedom for
 
 286 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 men, freedom for a nation, freedom to build 
 and grow ; any freedom but a wild beast's 
 freedom, to roam where it liked, and destroy 
 what it pleased ; any freedom but that of death, 
 free to dissolve into its component atoms. 
 
 By degrees, however, other purposes for 
 his people sprang up again, and gave interest 
 to his life. He thought the time might come 
 when he himself might go back and give to 
 his race something of what old Laon and the 
 Romans had given to him. Although he 
 could not have expressed it, he felt that in 
 every way the Romans must be conquered by 
 their own weapons ; not by spears and swords 
 only, tempered as Roman smiths could tem- 
 per them, but by Roman law and endurance, 
 and knowledge, and union. 
 
 Meantime he was working out freedom for 
 himself and for Hilda. For Hilda first. He 
 would not have his sister married until she 
 was a freewoman ; nor would he have her 
 owe her freedom to her betrothed. And 
 Onias was not altogether an easy proprietor 
 to purchase from. Again and again his price 
 for freedom rose as it drew near, by his find- 
 ing some entangled interpretations of the 
 original agreement ; until the patience of 
 Callias was exhausted, and he and Laon to- 
 gether insisted on definite contract being 
 made.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 287 
 
 Meantime, under the fretting of these petty 
 injustices, the attractions which Siward had 
 at first felt to the religion of the Hebrews lost 
 all its power. It sank in his mind to a level 
 with the other religions of the world. 
 
 Afar off, on an Olympus, an Asgard, or a 
 Sinai, among lightnings and thunders, very 
 powerful in the past, powerful now also, but 
 apparently not discriminating, he saw a 
 shadowy supreme authority ; whether resid- 
 ing in a Sovereign or in a Council, perhaps 
 mattered little ; since long ago the executive 
 had devolved on minor divinities, close at 
 hand, tangible and efficient. This supreme 
 authority towered in isolated pomp, to be 
 done homage to on certain court days, 
 whether one in seven, or one in three hundred 
 and sixty-five, did not seem to Siward ma- 
 terial ; the real worship being rendered sedu- 
 lously, the real prayer and service offered 
 morning, noon, and night, to the power which 
 could procure the good desired, whether 
 Tiberius Caesar or the Mint-goddess, under 
 her countless forms. 
 
 The religion of Esther, on the other hand, 
 seemed to him like the religion of his mother, 
 of Clcelia the Vestal, and of other good wo- 
 men. Pure flames of aspiration ascending 
 from pure hearts, through pure ether 
 whither, ah, whither ! who could tell !
 
 288 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Underneath all the open-air worship, the 
 fair temples, and the sunny heights, moreover, 
 he traced everywhere that ancient worship 
 of the Eumenides ; the dark cavern of consci- 
 ence and the sanctuary of avenging justice. 
 
 With the Jewish religion, the great Jewish 
 Hope of a Deliverer, which at first had seemed 
 to Siward so glorious, also ceased to interest 
 him. What could patriotism be to such as 
 Onias, but selfishness expanded ? What could 
 such a hope be, but this selfish patriotism 
 projected into the future ?. What could a 
 Jewish anointed King be, but a King of Jews, 
 an universal Emperor enthroned beside a city 
 Jerusalem, and crushing all other nations 
 under Jewish feet, as the deified Augustus 
 crushed all the world under the feet of vic- 
 torious Romans ! 
 
 The legend, with its golden future, was 
 beautiful, no doubt, transfigured through the 
 hearts of women like Esther, and shed a love- 
 ly morning light over them, more inspiring, 
 perhaps, though not more beautiful and ten- 
 der, than the lingering sunset tints of an ideal 
 Patria in the past which glowed around Cloelia 
 Pulchra. 
 
 On little Hilda, meantime, bond-service 
 weighed lightly, mere ballast to make her 
 course surer and her poise steadier. 
 
 In Esther's presence there was a stillness
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 289 
 
 and a peace in which the earnest yet joyous 
 nature of the German maiden grew symmetri- 
 cal and strong. 
 
 A gentle hand came between her and every- 
 thing that could have chafed. Pride had? little 
 place in Esther's heart, and therefore sorrow 
 found only her softer work to' do there. Her 
 presence warmed and lighted a little sphere 
 of purity and peace around her, and in the 
 heart of it the little German maiden grew up, 
 in the seclusion of that Oriental home, with 
 as little contact with the brilliant, corrupt 
 world of Antioch around her, as if Antioch 
 had been the wild Syrian hills, and she a 
 patriarchal maiden keeping her father's sheep 
 by sweet, fresh springs, among the green pas- 
 tures of tender grass and the waters of rest. 
 
 The sadness of Esther's own life fell but as a 
 sacred, calming quiet around the child ; whilst 
 the seclusion of the Jewish home was kept 
 from being a narrowing isolation for Hilda by 
 three inlets and outlets between her little 
 world and the great world beyond. 
 
 One was a gateway into the Past, into green 
 forest-paths, gladdened and hallowed by the 
 voice of her mother. Another into the 
 Future, a threshold which she was soon to 
 cross.- And through this came shining 
 glimpses of sweet hope, and visions of beauty 
 from Callias's Greek world of art. The third 
 13
 
 290 VICTORY OF 'THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 was the upward openirtg, like that in the 
 heart of every Roman house, unroofed, open 
 to the sky, through which the dews and rains 
 showered into the impluvium, and the flames 
 went up from the hearth-altar, and the soul 
 went up to the stars which crossed it solemnly 
 at night ; went up through that night which 
 Esther had taught her was no darkness to 
 One above ; and beyond the night, through 
 the stars which were as the golden sands of 
 His heavenly shores, yet which he called by 
 name, to him whose name was not the Thun- 
 derer, or the Sun-god, or only the Almighty 
 or the Beautiful, but " the Lord God, merci- 
 ful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant 
 in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for 
 thousands; forgiving iniquity and transgres- 
 sion and sin, and that will by no means clear 
 the guilty." 
 
 Little Hilda was drinking into her inmost 
 spirit that glorious name of God, for the pre- 
 servation of which the Jewish nation existed ; 
 a vine, a life-tree in the world, until that 
 name should be manifested in One born of 
 Jewish race, the True Vine and Life-Tree for 
 all the world ; until the mystic bud which en- 
 folded the hidden treasure should expand 
 into the Fruit for the healing of nations, the 
 Bread of Life for mankind. 
 
 In vain old Laon warned Callias against
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 2 gi 
 
 the peril of suffering his bride to be " fettered 
 in the iron bondage of the Jewish super- 
 stition." 
 
 To Callias it was, as received by Esther 
 and Hilda, only one of the countless forms of 
 the Beautiful. 
 
 " They have lovely legends of good wo- 
 men," he said, " these Jews ; and magnificent 
 traditions of heroic women ; as fine as any of 
 old Rome chieftainesses, princesses, Ama- 
 zons who had rescued their nation ; grand, 
 fearless heroines, with eyes like lightning, and 
 brows like Hermon. But Esther and little 
 Hilda are not of that type. There is a story 
 of two women who loved each other, just as 
 Esther and Hilda do a sorrowful Naomi, 
 and a young fair Ruth, strong and patient as 
 any of the Amazons, but all her strength the 
 strength of faithful affection and tender piety. 
 A Gentile* too" she was, this sweet Ruth, like 
 Hilda, yet enshrined in the heart of their old 
 national books. Then there is a Hannah, a 
 mother ; and a Queen Esther saving her peo- 
 ple by her beauty, her loyalty and her prayers. 
 Beautiful, chaste old legends. I wish nothing 
 better for my Hilda than to grow up steeped 
 in their fresh air and pure, soft light." 
 
 " Boy ! boy ! dreamer !" Laon would reply, 
 " you talk as if everything were a dream to 
 every one. I tell thee, these soft Jewish wo-
 
 292 VICTORY OF TH7S VANQUISHED. 
 
 men have a religion against which you may 
 break your will and 'break their hearts, but 
 you will never uproot it. Wife, children, 
 husband, they will sacrifice all for this super- 
 stition of their God, and of their people." 
 
 " But Hilda is not of their race," Callias 
 replied. " She takes all the beauty, and leaves 
 out the severity. To her this faith is no rigid 
 armour. It is a lovely vesture of fine linen, 
 white and glistering. The Jews may be 
 bigots, and eaten up with national pride, but 
 their proselytes take their good doctrine, and 
 happily can have no share in the national 
 pride. If it were not for their uncivilized ob- 
 jection to human statues," he added, fervently, 
 " I should have a great inclination to claim 
 instruction and be a proselyte myself." 
 
 So Hilda continued to attend the synagogue 
 with Esther. She learned to watch until the 
 three stars which marked the Sabbath de- 
 tached themselves from the fading daylight, 
 and the sacred day of rest had begun, and to 
 welcome them with delight, like lamps lighted 
 for a festival. The mere sound of many 
 voices in the synagogue, the mere presence 
 of numbers, made a holiday in her secluded 
 life. Then there was the reading of sacred 
 words, which Esther explained to her : and 
 the chanting of the ancient liturgy ; and then 
 the long leisure in the quiet house or under
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 293 
 
 the shadow of figs and trellised vines in the 
 court, which left room for so much sweet talk 
 with Esther, and so many happy visions of her 
 own ; she as a Gentile being, moreover,, per- 
 mitted a freer use of her busy, serviceable 
 hands than was considered lawful for a Jewess 
 in the various loving ministries to the many 
 " hungry," to whom Esther made the Sabbath 
 a delight, by dealing out bread and raiment, 
 and gathering them to her home. 
 
 To this bounty Onias did not object. Giv- 
 ing alms was a part of his religion. On this 
 point the letter of the law was plain, and the 
 meaning of the law and the prophets legible ; 
 as plain and as legible as the rules and threats 
 concerning the keeping of the Sabbath. 
 
 There were threats, and there were robbers 
 capable of being mysteriously commissioned 
 to execute these threats, between Jerusalem 
 and Jericho. 
 
 Moreover there were promises. The Hand 
 which made Araham "very rich" in servants 
 and in cattle, could in these latter days make 
 Abraham's faithful children rich in Roman 
 coin. 
 
 To set a portion of property rigidly apart 
 for the Unnam cable was as much a part of the 
 contract between Him and Israel, as to set 
 apart a portion of time. The quantity of both 
 which He demanded was quite definitely fix-
 
 291 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 ed ; and it was dangerous to trifle with those 
 celestial accounts. The tithe of mint and 
 anise, and the seventh of the measured min- 
 utes of life, must by no means fail. It was 
 probable that the tenth would be made up in 
 good Gentile coin, and the seventh in length 
 of days. It was possible even that it might 
 be paid in good measure, one of the contract- 
 ing parties being in some sublime and relig- 
 ious sense possessor of heaven and earth. 
 "Job had twice as much" given back. Heze- 
 kiah's days were stretched out fifteen years. 
 
 Therefore Onias, with that true self-interest 
 and far-seeing prudence which are the change- 
 less principles of Pharisaical religion, encour- 
 aged Esther in her benefaction to the mem- 
 bers of the synagogue ; being only perplexed 
 as to the amount, by the conflict between the 
 pleasures of popularity and the perils of being 
 thought rich. 
 
 The day of Hilda's marriage came. Along 
 the streets and through the gardens of Anti- 
 och the young bride was led to her new home 
 with the lamps of the Virgins, the bridal songs, 
 and all the festive procession which have be- 
 come to us familiar and sacred parables from 
 childhood. 
 
 Onias stroked his beard at the close of the 
 day in a comfortable little glow of benevolent
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 295 
 
 complacency. He had suffered Esther to be- 
 stow suitable raiment on the portionless maid- 
 en, and had even with some little reluctance 
 seen certain gold and silver coins transferred 
 from Esther's own dark tresses to the fair hair 
 of the German bride. 
 
 Moreover, was not his taking a ransom at 
 all an act of grace ? There was no command 
 that he knew in Leviticus about a jubilee, or 
 a sabbatical year of liberation for Gentile 
 slaves. Or, at all events, no stipulation as to 
 price. And Hilda's services were becoming 
 more valuable every year. 
 
 He felt he had really gone beyond the letter 
 of the law, and done an action worthy of be- 
 ing recorded by the prophets. 
 
 In this sense of virtue his heart felt alto- 
 gether so expansive, that he said in the even- 
 ing to Siward, 
 
 " One day, my son, I shall perhaps be able 
 to grant you also your emancipation !" 
 
 " Fix the price now, then," said Siward, ab- 
 ruptly and concisely. 
 
 "Now, my son! now! Scarcely a day 
 this for bargains. We have given it to festiv- 
 ity. I have the kindliest feelings towards you 
 and your sister. Did you see the gold brace- 
 let on her wrist ? I gave it myself to Esther 
 long ago. This is a day for gifts, not for busi- 
 ness."
 
 296 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Siward's spirit rose. He had purchased his 
 sister's freedom at the hard price of years of 
 his own ; literally with a large piece of his 
 own life. To her, by patient, generous toil, 
 he had opened home, love, and liberty. Be- 
 fore him lay years of bondage, petty injustice, 
 and all the terrible possibilities which were 
 included in the slavery of those days ; the 
 yoke, the scourge, the cross. 
 
 He could not brook that what he had pur- 
 chased literally by giving himself, should be 
 spoken of as a gift from another. 
 
 " I do not ask you to give me alms. I ask 
 you to do justly," he said. " Call in fair 
 judges, fix the price of my freedom, and take 
 back your wedding gifts without counting 
 them as part of it." 
 
 But to the Pharisee to give alms was far 
 easier than to do justly. Alms were a definite 
 quantity which could be set apart out of the 
 interest of money and the profits of business, 
 and leave the whole untouched. Justice was 
 a large word a text capable of many perplex- 
 ing interpretations. In the highest sense it 
 might involve sacrifices which would even in- 
 terfere with capital, the sacred treasure of the 
 Mint-goddess itself. 
 
 " Do justly !" he said angrily ; " do justly ! 
 That is a fitting Gentile return for generosity 
 like mine. I give freely like a prince, and
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 297 
 
 you call on me to do justly, as if I were a 
 thief." 
 
 " My sister shall never be fettered by your 
 gifts," said Siward hotly. " To-morrow you 
 may count your bracelet again among your 
 treasures." 
 
 But Esther had crept beside them while 
 they were speaking, and now she laid one 
 hand gently on her husband's arm, and one 
 on Siward's hand. 
 
 " It was my bracelet, Siward," she said, 
 deprecatingly, "and my gift to the child I 
 love. Let her keep it. It is hard enough to 
 part from her. Do not rob me of the delight 
 of serving her. And, believe me, Onias will 
 do justly by thee," she added to Siward. " He 
 means it. It is written in our law. To-mor- 
 row the contract shall be made for your ran- 
 som. And, believe me, he will never wish to 
 break it. For whom should we spare and 
 toil and hoard ? What has this life to offer us 
 that we should dare to offend against our 
 God?" 
 
 Her eyes shone with a deep glow which 
 would have made Callias think rather of the 
 inspired prophetesses than of the meek Han- 
 nahs or Ruths of her race. 
 
 But she had touched a chord which, while 
 it vibrated in agony through her own heart, 
 smote on the conscience of her husband with 
 13*
 
 298 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 a power he dared not resist. She had associ- 
 ated herself with him in the responsibility and 
 the peril. 
 
 And with trembling hands the next day he 
 signed a contract, binding himself irrevocably 
 to accept a certain ransom for Siward, when- 
 ever paid. 
 
 It was not an easy sum for Siward to earn, 
 the greater portion of his toil having mean- 
 time to be exclusively for Onias. Yet from 
 that day the weight of bondage passed from 
 Siward's heart. 
 
 He saw before him freedom, with its noble, 
 liberating work for his people ; and between 
 him and it nothing but the endurance of his 
 own brave heart, and the toil of his own 
 strong arm. 
 
 Once more he felt a man, not a chattel. In 
 this new hope of freedom, it became once 
 more almost credible to him that there might 
 be a free, living God, such as Esther believed 
 in, and a Hope for Israel and for man, such as 
 she had taught Hilda to' cherish.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 GRIPPINA had entered (A.D. 30) on 
 the last fatal period of her years of 
 bereavement, the three years of her 
 banishment in the island of Panda- 
 taria. Those three years were spent by Tibe- 
 rius in voluntary exile from the Rome he 
 ruled and dreaded, among the twelve villas 
 of the island of Capreas ; in such a paradise 
 as men have constructed for themselves when 
 they have determined to set at nought all the 
 flaming swords of Divine law, to evade all the 
 toil and travail and " sweat of the brow," and 
 make an enchanted garden, full of all things 
 pleasant to the eye and good for food, in the 
 land of thorns and thistles, with themselves 
 in the midst thereof, as gods, " knowing good 
 and evil." 
 
 Those three years which, in Syna, in the 
 wilderness of Temptation, on the Mount of
 
 300 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Transfiguration, among the streets and hill- 
 sides of Galilee and Judsea, were spent in re- 
 gaining Paradise for man, by restoring man 
 to God. 
 
 -x- -* -x- * # # 
 
 At last the three years of Agrippina's exile 
 were drawing near their close (A. D. 33). 
 
 The sisters Clcelia Pulchra and Diodora 
 were together in a little chamber assigned to 
 the Vestal, near the temple. They did not 
 leave each other now. 
 
 Day or night the priestess would watch no 
 more by the shrine, to guard the Sacred Fire 
 for Rome. 
 
 The watching had fallen now to Clcelia 
 Diodora. Day and night she guarded and 
 cherished that precious Sacred Fire of life, 
 which, guard and cherish as she would, she 
 knew too well was slowly dying in the heart 
 of her sister. 
 
 She was just entering the door with a 
 pitcher of fresh water from the old spring on 
 the Ccelian Hill. Her sister had longed for 
 it ; and every morning now, along the paths 
 where in former happy years the }*oung 
 priestess had borne the water for the shrine, 
 the early light flaming through the bays or 
 the vine-leaves on her buoyant form and joy- 
 ous face, the same early sunbeams fell on the 
 shrunken form and sad worn features of the
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANqUlSIIED. 301 
 
 deformed girl. But the ministry was certain- 
 ly as high, and the heart as pure. 
 
 " It is almost a comfort, my Beautiful," Dio- 
 dora said as she held the cool draught to the 
 sufferer's parched lips, " that the old places 
 we loved are so changed since you used to 
 meet me among the vines and myrtles in the 
 old garden. The garden is gone, and the old 
 Home swept away in the great fire. New 
 trees and shrubs are there, that throw no 
 changing shadows yet on the dusty paths be- 
 tween the new walls. Even the Jews are 
 gone from their dwellings by the Fountain of 
 Egeria in the valley below. It is a comfort 
 that things are changed and spoiled a little, 
 now you cannot be there." 
 
 " Little sister," said the Vestal, rising on 
 her pillows and fixing her large wistful eyes 
 on the face which ceaselessly watched her, " I 
 have been thinking so long, and at last I must 
 speak. Laon spoke to me once, long ago, of 
 an old Jew who told you of a Hope his na- 
 tion had cherished for thousands of years a 
 Hope he believed to be now near at hand. I 
 have never spoken to you again of this ; but 
 I have never forgotten it. Year after year 1 
 have watched for some sign of this Deliverer. 
 East and west, and north and south, I have 
 looked for tidings. Chiefly from the east. 
 All in vain. Once I thought some hope
 
 302 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 might lie for Rome and the world in Ger- 
 manicus. He seemed like one of our old 
 heroes with a new Greek grace on him ; his 
 home pure as an old home of the republic. 
 
 "And again, I heard the young German 
 captive who rescued you on the day of the 
 Triumph speak of a hero of his race to whom 
 the Germans looked as a Liberator. And I 
 thought, ' Perhaps Rome has sunk too low 
 for any deliverance to come from her. From 
 a young nation pure and strong, with men 
 like that young German, frank and generous, 
 and brave and true, and women like Siguna, 
 a new life might spring for the world." 
 
 " But Germanicus was poisoned at Antioch ; 
 Herman was assassinated by his own people 
 among their own forests. 
 
 " North and south, and west and east, there 
 comes no sign or sound ; and the world grows 
 ever worse. Did you ever see that Jew again ? 
 Tell me all you know. There can be no peril 
 in any belief for me now. Even old Laon 
 would not dread anything for me now." 
 
 " I saw the old Jew again," Diodora replied. 
 " I never spoke to him of that Hope. But 
 Siguna was with him when he died." 
 
 " He died without seeing any token of ful- 
 filment ? " 
 
 " She said he seemed to die reluctantly, 
 chiefly because of that. He thought to have
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 303 
 
 lived till the light dawned. But she said he 
 evidently held the Hope as firmly as ever. 
 And he said his daughter would see it." 
 
 " I would I could have seen him once," the 
 Vestal said. " I feel as if he might have told 
 me something I long to know. But now," she 
 added despondingly, " all the Jews are banish- 
 ed from Rome. I shall die without seeing 
 any good come to Rome and to the world. 
 But I think I could die not reluctantly, if I 
 had such a sure hope that it must come." 
 
 " He seemed to hold strange converse, 
 Siguna said, before he died, with One unseen, 
 whom he feared and loved. He spoke as to 
 some One who heard. Sometimes his terror 
 and shrinking were great greater, Siguna 
 said, than she has seen among her people or 
 ours. It was as if his soul was awake in some 
 wonderful way as if he looked on dying, not 
 as a dim slumber or a shadowy repetition of 
 this life, but an awaking to intenser life. 
 Sometimes he shrank with unutterable horror, 
 as if from some great chasm that he saw 
 clearly. And sometimes he seemed to see no 
 chasm at all, but only God. And then he said 
 and looked ' Peace.' And on his tomb, Siguna 
 said on the stone which covers the ledge 
 where he was laid in the Jewish Catacomb 
 he desired to have the word Peace engraven 
 in Greek. She saw it on many stones there
 
 304 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 as well as on his. I never saw such words on 
 any urn or sarcophagus of ours." 
 
 " God !" said the Vestal. " God, and Peace !" 
 
 " I remember," Diodora resumed, after a 
 long pause, half reluctantly, " one of the songs 
 of his people, which the old man said to me. 
 It was full of an exulting passion of expecta- 
 tion and joy. Even in his feeble voice the 
 words made me feel as if some great festive 
 chorus was around me. Like all the songs he 
 knew, it was sung to God. The fear and 
 tremulous expectation, and joy, and triumph- 
 ant hope in those strange songs, all were 
 hanging on God. This one was called a New 
 Song. A thousand years old now, he said, 
 but it sounded fresh as the lark's this morning. 
 It spoke of strength and beauty above all in 
 God. There was the dashing of waves in it, 
 the deep voice of forests, but all were full of 
 rapturous gladness : the heavens, the rivers, 
 the sea, the hills, the fields, the floods, rejoic- 
 ing, clapping hands, like children, singing, 
 shouting aloud for joy all because He com- 
 eth ; He cometh to judge the earth, to judge 
 the world righteously." 
 
 The Vestal raised herself on her arm, and 
 her eyes grew deeper than ever, and shone 
 with something of their old radiance. 
 
 " Cloelia, little sister, is not that reason 
 enough ? To judge the world righteously !
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 305 
 
 If I were sure of that, I could die gladly or, 
 I think, I could scarcely die, for joy ! Think 
 of all the wrong- ! Think of that German cap- 
 tive boy, so noble, and not yet safe even from 
 the cross ; of the millions of slaves ; of the cries 
 from the provinces ; of the wickedness in the 
 city ; of Tiberius at Capreae. ' He cometh ; 
 He cometh,' to judge the world righteously." 
 
 She sank back on her cushions. 
 
 Diodora did not answer. 
 
 She was watching the weary face, again 
 sunk into quiet ; the long lashes of the closed 
 eyelids shading the worn face. 
 
 She was thinking, not of the suffering 
 world, but of the love that had been all in the 
 world she cared for. 
 
 Clcelia Pulchra looked up again, and smiled 
 into the tearful eyes. 
 
 " Would it not be good to know surely," 
 she said, taking her sister's hand " to know 
 the world would be dealt fairly with at last? " 
 
 Then for once Diodora's self-restraint gave 
 way. She threw herself on her knees by the 
 side of the couch, and leaned her face on the 
 thin hand she held. 
 
 " What do I care for the world, my Beauti- 
 ful ! " she said. " It is wicked, cruel, selfish. 
 What would being judged do for it, except to 
 sweep it away once for all ! If some One 
 would come and make it good, that would
 
 306 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 be something. Only too late ; too late for 
 thee and me! What should I care for the 
 world if you were to leave it ! It is of you I 
 want to know. If some one would come and 
 tell me where you are going, and how to get 
 to you. Anywhere, anywhere only to be 
 sure we would find each other. If we were 
 only together, I would not mind being a 
 voiceless shade, or anything. We should never 
 be voiceless shades to each other. We should 
 make the world real for each other wherever 
 we were. Just by living together, and by 
 loving. But all the people in the world 
 would be voiceless shades to me without thee. 
 With thee the fire-rivers would be Olympian 
 sunshine. But to be a bit of some great soul 
 of the world ! it were as well to be a bit of the 
 dust of the world. This is the great terror. 
 Oh, my sister, if some god would only tell me 
 of thee, I would let the world be." 
 
 There was a long silence. Slowly Diodora 
 regained her self-control ; her sobs ceased, and 
 she knelt silently, still clasping the thin hand. 
 
 Not in prayer. The grief was suppressed, 
 not soothed. She rose with lips firmly set to 
 endure, but with no peace on her face. 
 
 The wistful eyes followed her as she moved 
 quietly about the room, preparing some food. 
 At last, when she brought it, Clcelia Pulchra, 
 fixing her eyes on her, calmly said
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 307 
 
 " Little sister, I have tried to serve my 
 Rome ; I fear not to much avail. I have tried 
 to make thy burden lighter, and that, I think, 
 I did. By all 'our love, promise me one thing 
 before I go. Promise me you will not rush 
 after me out of the world ! " 
 
 Cloelia Diodora stood still, and turned pale, 
 as if surprised and arrested in a hidden pur- 
 pose. 
 
 " I do not think it wrong ! " she said in a 
 low voice. " It might be cowardly. But the 
 bravest of our Rome have not thought so. 
 Laon says his wise men thought it would be 
 like a soldier deserting his post. But I know 
 not what post has been given me in the world 
 to keep, that any should be wronged by my 
 deserting it. Nor know I who gave me such 
 a post ; or had a right to command me to stay." 
 
 The dying priestess held the reluctant hand, 
 and gazed on the half-averted eyes, until they 
 turned to her. 
 
 " I have a strange unconquerable Hope that 
 One is coming," she said. " I want you to 
 stay and see. And I have a strange dim fear, 
 lest, rushing after me unbidden, there should 
 be none at hand to lead you, and we should 
 lose each other in the dark, and search for 
 each other for ever (if we live at all) ; and 
 have no voice to call each other, and no hand 
 to guide us to each other, and never find each
 
 3 o8 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 other more. Promise me, by our love, you 
 will wait." 
 
 The poor face so lately convulsed with 
 weeping quivered again. 
 
 " Do not ask it, my beautiful ! Anything 
 but that ! It was the only hope I had." 
 
 " Old Laon was good to you !" the priest- 
 ess said, after a pause. " He saved you. He 
 loves you. He looks to your kindness for liis 
 old age. He may grow blind and helpless, 
 and want you to care for him as he cared for 
 you." 
 
 " He would scarcely ask it. He would 
 know what the world would be to me with- 
 out you." 
 
 " He would not ask it. But he would want 
 it, little sister !" she added, very tenderly. " I 
 have tried to be a loyal Roman maiden and 
 keep my charge. I entreat you, do not aban- 
 don yours." 
 
 " Until Laon dies, then !" Diodora replied, 
 hesitating. 
 
 " After that it cannot be long," the Vestal 
 said. " For the sake of me for the fear of 
 missing each other in the dark for the sake 
 of quieting this fear of mine, if it be a childish 
 fear as you would go through any mockery 
 or pain to bring me the smallest thing I wished 
 for, go through that pain to save me this fear 
 now."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 309 
 
 A long- silence. Then the compressed lips 
 parted in the old radiant smile which made 
 the worn face beautiful. 
 
 " For thy sake, yes ! What are fears of 
 pain hereafter, to give thee a day's ease while 
 I have thee ? Would I not pour out my life 
 in one drop to oool thy thirst ? Shall I vow 
 it to thee at any shrine ?" 
 
 " Take my hands and kiss me and promise. 
 That will be the surest vow." 
 
 " By our love, I promise," the younger sis- 
 ter said. 
 
 Clcelia Pulchra was satisfied. They knew 
 nothing more sacred with which to seal the 
 .vow. 
 
 And soon afterwards the sufferer fell into a 
 quiet sleep. When she awoke, she said, 
 
 " When great people die, there is generally 
 an emancipation of slaves. A Vestal Virgin 
 has some claims on Rome. I have never 
 made any. That German captive who saved 
 thee is no longer a slave of the Imperial house, 
 but of some subject. I have been thinking I 
 will ask it as my last request of Rome, that 
 his ransom be paid. I should like to think he 
 would be freed, when I am. Darling, say 
 those dying words of the wise Athenian 
 again." 
 
 Diodora repeated, as well as she could, the 
 familiar words she had read so often to Laon.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " ' But those who are found to have lived 
 an eminently holy life, these are they who, 
 being freed or set at large from these regions 
 on the earth as from a prison, arrive at the 
 pure abodes above ; since our soul is certainly 
 immortal.' 
 
 " And again : ' He thinks that I am he 
 whom he shall shortly behold dead ! But do 
 you be sureties that when I die I shall not re- 
 main, but shall depart to some happy state of 
 the blessed, that when ye see my body either 
 burned or buried, ye may not be afflicted for 
 me, as though I suffered some dreadful thing, 
 nor say at my interment that Socrates is laid 
 out, or is carried out, or is buried. 
 
 " ' The soul is most certainly immortal and 
 imperishable, and will really exist in the un- 
 seen world, taking not Jung with it but the disci- 
 pline it has gained here.' 
 
 " And then he spoke of our dwelling on this 
 small earth, as ants or frogs about a marsh, 
 and when we die getting wings, and rising to 
 the large, pure, beautiful world on high." 
 
 " Ah, little sister," the Vestal said, " if we 
 were sure of those wings ! sure we have them 
 growing in our souls ! and that we (if we in- 
 deed live on) shall be indeed among those 
 pure spirits who will soar, not sink ! But this 
 at least you will do for me ; this, of which -we 
 can be sure. You will see that the German
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 3II 
 
 captive is set free. It will feel like dying for 
 some good, like a soldier of our old Rome, to 
 know that/ 
 
 That night, when the lamp burned low to- 
 wards morning, the Vestal seemed to think 
 she was alone, as in the old Vigils in the tem- 
 ple at night, for she said, 
 
 " See, beautiful, pure, vestal stars, one by 
 one, as you pass across my little space of sky ! 
 See, I, even I, have kept the fire and the sa- 
 cred charge for Rome. Oh, boundless Heav- 
 ens, I have kept my Hearth-fire for you ! Are 
 ye keeping a hearth-fire for me ? This fire I 
 have kept is not me ; I have but kept it burn- 
 ing. And these starry fires are not you. Be- 
 yond, within, beyond are ye ! I am coming ! 
 Give me some little fire still to keep bright 
 for the world ! Give me some great heart 
 where I may rest !" 
 
 And then, when the flickering lamp died out 
 and the calm morning broke, her spirit seemed 
 to come into daylight, and she said, going 
 back with the clear gaze of those who are de- 
 parting, 
 
 " The German captive will be free. It may 
 seem, after all, like my old dream, when the 
 Cloelia, who swam the river and saved the 
 children, appeared to me and told me my life 
 would be like the stream our forefatlrer
 
 3 i2 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 brought from the Alban hills to Rome. I 
 thought it might then. But perhaps all it has 
 really done is to fill two cups of cold water ; 
 living to fill one fresh for thee morning by 
 morning, and dying to purchase one for him 
 who saved thee. Yet even that is something." 
 
 And after a pause ^she went on in a low 
 voice, 
 
 " He will be free. And perhaps, perhaps, I 
 shall be free too ; out of prison and free and 
 winged, and know about you, and wait for 
 you. If there were only some One there be- 
 fore to wait for me, to receive me ! Perhaps ! 
 It is a dark long journey to go on a ' perhaps.' 
 Little sister, be near me when I go. Let me 
 know that brave heart will fear bondage no 
 more, nor the scourge nor the cross. Let me 
 know your hand is in mine. And let me think 
 that perhaps my life has been a stream of re- 
 freshment to you and to him ; my life and my 
 death. And that perhaps, perhaps Socrates 
 was right about the soul and her wings, and 
 the old Jew about the Hope. ' For He com- 
 eth, He cometh to judge the earth, to judge 
 the world righteously.' "
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 N the Sacred Pomcerium the space 
 marked out by religious rites along 
 the line of the ancient wall, where 
 divinations and auguries for the City 
 were taken, where no unhallowed thing must 
 rest they laid the ashes of Clcelia the Vestal, 
 as things sacred, belonging to heaven and to 
 Rome. 
 
 Thither Clcelia Diodora crept morning and 
 evening ; and there she watched through 
 many a night. Free from fear of evil : free 
 from fear, as those are free for whom life has 
 no longer any hope. What could the worst 
 enemy do more for her than break those fet- 
 ters to life, which she had vowed never to 
 break for herself? 
 
 Her sorrow was at least allowed to flow in 
 
 an unbroken tide. With her sister's life, all 
 
 worth calling life in her own had ended. It 
 
 was she who had been burned in that funeral 
 
 14 (33)
 
 314 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 pyre whose heart lay smouldering in ashes, 
 being burned for ever, yet unconsumed. Love 
 and Duty had been slain together. For her 
 there were no tender claims, no inevitable 
 small necessities and cares, plucking her'back 
 to every-day life. No one would miss her, 
 and she was neglecting nothing, if, from morn- 
 ing to night, from night till morning, she kept 
 ceaseless watch by her dead. 
 
 Her one charge in life had ended before 
 life. Henceforth her whole existence might 
 be as this Pomcerium a sacred waste in the 
 midst of the Great City, once ploughed with 
 the sacred plough of Hope, now dedicated to 
 the Past, to Sacred Rites, and to the Dead. 
 
 If there were none to weep with her, and 
 say " Weep not," with compassionate voice, 
 almighty in two worlds, like Him whom yet 
 she knew not ; there were also none to say, 
 with dry eyes and dry unmoved voice, like 
 Tiberius " Weep not ; tears in moderation 
 are excusable, even desirable: you have shed 
 enough ; now return to pleasure." There 
 were none to say (as if there were consolation 
 in a comparative anatomy of torture), " Your 
 cup is not bitterer than many others ; " or, 
 with smooth self-complacency and easy senti- 
 mental tears, " Ah ! I have tasted it too ; " or, 
 with comfortable optimism of shallow relig- 
 iousness, " It is not really bitter taken aright,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 3^ 
 
 it is sweet " (as if a certain sweet spiritual 
 flavor were what we wanted, and not love, 
 the old love, bitter or sweet). 
 
 Every one knew she had lost all ; and those 
 who cared enough to think about it felt that 
 the only refuge for her would be to die also, 
 and thought, if she had courage enough, that 
 was in her own power. 
 
 Neither had she any inward conflicts be- 
 tween weak, would-be faith and mighty ex-, 
 isting misery. Strong, in a deep, unbroken 
 tide, the great sorrow swept over her ; con- 
 sciously stifled and drowning in it, blinded 
 and stunned with it, yet unable to faint or 
 sink. 
 
 She believed the gods (if there were gods) 
 those sunny, smiling Olympians had been 
 unjust, merciless, cruel to her : to her, and the 
 pure, beautiful Being who had been ready to 
 give her life to them. She believed it with- 
 out reserve, and said it to herself without 
 self-reproach. She dashed bitter words of 
 accusation up against that sky of brass ; faint- 
 ly comforting herself sometimes with the 
 thought that there were some behind it who 
 could hear and might be stung amidst their 
 bliss, if only stung to a little scornful smile 
 on the smooth lips amidst their feasting. 
 
 The darkest tim.es of all were when she felt 
 that no cries of her anguish could reach any
 
 3 i6 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 one, either, to awaken pity or scorn ; that she 
 was, after all, but as a puling child striking 
 its helpless wounded hands against the stone 
 that had wounded it. 
 
 She felt, not stricken only, but wronged ; 
 wronged as she (embittered though her heart 
 was) would, she knew, have wronged no one. 
 Her whole life had been one wrong. Why 
 had she been imprisoned without crime in the 
 joyless dungeon of this misshapen flesh ? Why 
 had drops, not of bitterness only, but of 
 venom, been distilling all these years into her 
 heart? Why, now, had the only hand that 
 warded them from her heart been smitten and 
 made powerless? Her whole being was in a 
 tumult of revolt, and she did not attempt to 
 still it. In the loneliness of the Pomcerium, by 
 that sacred urn, the tempest within made the 
 silence tumultuous. The noise of the City, 
 the perilous thronging of the crowd in the 
 narrow streets, the eager cries and voices of 
 the multitude in the Forum, seemed stiller 
 than this solitude. With the silencing of that 
 one voice, all human creatures had become 
 voiceless shades to her. 
 
 " You are all nothing but masks," she 
 thought. " Some of you seem to be cherished 
 children, beloved brides, happy mothers, 
 strong men. But it is all seeming. You only 
 seem to be children, brides, mothers. But
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 you are mere perishing, mortal creatures. 
 Soon you will all have to lay aside your 
 masks, and become like my Beautiful." 
 
 With a kind of bitter triumph, she saw an- 
 other King enthroned above all the tumult of 
 the City and the pomp of the Palatine. 
 
 " Not Tiberius," she said. " Death, and 
 only Death, is the Universal Lord." 
 
 There were times when she felt the exist- 
 ence of the meanest living creature a cruel 
 wrong to her Dead. She grudged to all the 
 life her Beloved had lost, and which she could 
 not lose. There were times, again, when she 
 had a fierce joy in the thought how brief the 
 seeming advantage of the living was. 
 
 " Soon, soon," she said, " you will all be 
 crumbled into just such a little urn as this. 
 The majority are there already the best, the 
 bravest." 
 
 She felt her heart slowly turning into ice. 
 And this was the only terror left. She dread- 
 ed lest she should grow bitter and malignant, 
 like other distorted and baffled creatures from 
 whom hope had died, and so grow unlike and 
 estranged from her Beloved. 
 
 Yet one day, when she sat weighed down 
 by this fear, crouched on the ground, and 
 near her a poor bird was helplessly struggling 
 in a snare, beating its wings, and piteously 
 chirping, with tender, deft fingers she un-
 
 3 i8 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 twisted the snare, and set the trembling cap- 
 tive free. 
 
 " It is worth while setting you free," she 
 said, as if apologizing to herself, as it flew up- 
 wards, knowing nothing of its liberator ; " you 
 have wings !" 
 
 That little act of kindness reacted, stirred 
 the dying embers, brought a little warmth 
 about her heart ; and with that the thought 
 of Siward. She wondered if freedom would, 
 after all, be any boon to him. She felt it was 
 sweet he should owe it to her Beloved. 
 
 She had written a letter to old Laon about 
 Siward's ransom ; and wondered, with a 
 dreamy, languid wonder, wlfat he would 
 write or do in consequence if he would care 
 enough to come to her in her misery. And 
 with the thought of Laon came visions of the 
 little dark room behind the workshop. 
 
 " I could be a hand again for him, perhaps," 
 she thought ; " and perhaps one day a voice 
 (she wished me to serve him) ; never more a 
 heart or a soul for any one." 
 
 Then her mind reverted to the wise words 
 Laon had taught her. 
 
 " I used to think I could launch fearless 
 hence into the unknown, like Socrates, on 
 that hope, and risk all on that hazard," she 
 thought ; " and I still could. But to trust her to 
 it is another thing. To trust her to a Perhaps !
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " How do I know that the other world, if 
 there be one, is not another Capreas, with an- 
 other Tiberius holding all the worlds bound 
 and trembling in the capricious cruelty of 
 fear as he holds Rome ? 
 
 " If not, how comes there to be a Caprese 
 here ? " 
 
 And in the confusion and dimness of that 
 land of the terrible shadow, with the rush of 
 its advancing, devouring tides ever in her 
 ears, a wild longing to see the unseen took 
 possession of her ; to see, at any price, any- 
 thing of the future world, which had become 
 the present world to her Beloved. 
 
 Before the Olympians, old legends said, had 
 reigned the Titans. 
 
 It was said there were regions where the 
 Titans still reigned. If this dim, transitory 
 world of ours was a world of shadows to the 
 gods, below this world was a yet dimmer un- 
 der-world, which seemed a world of shadows 
 to us. 
 
 There, still reigned in awful solemnity the 
 ancient gods, all that was left of the dethroned 
 dynasty, with a mystic majesty about them, 
 their grand forms gigantic and dim in the 
 stationary twilight, which never faded and 
 never dawned, the gray fathers and mothers 
 of the gods blind, some of them, some of 
 them in torments, yet royal, and reigning in
 
 320 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 through all the defeat and pain, in a dim, lurid 
 land of fire and night. 
 
 How far had their dethronement been the 
 consequence of the necessary growth of 
 things, and how far a wrong? Was there a 
 faint pulse of hope throbbing through that 
 under-world, as now in some hearts in the 
 dark world of Tiberius Csesar ? a faint hope 
 of some far-off dim rescue by a Deliverer in 
 strange sympathy with man, and with those 
 ancient dethroned powers ? 
 
 Long she mused on the old legends as she 
 kept those long, lowly vigils by the tomb. 
 
 For in some dim way that under-world was 
 bound up with men. This Hades, the exile 
 and abode of dethroned gods, was also the 
 place of exile, and yet the longest abode of 
 men. The Empire of the Titans was the em- 
 pire of the dead. 
 
 If her sister Cioelia the Vestal had been 
 banished, like the Princess Agrippina, to the 
 island of Pandataria, what interest would the 
 fairest cities and paradises of the world have 
 had for her compared with the seas and shores 
 around that lonely, barren isle ! 
 
 How she would have haunted the nearest 
 shores, and treasured the faintest rumors 
 brought by the fishermen who had coasted 
 near those inhospitable shores, and travers- 
 ed sea and land to have a few minutes' in-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 321 
 
 tercourse with any who had returned thence? 
 For even that imperial prison, with its moat of 
 seas, did indeed sometim2s yield up its exiles. 
 
 Could it be possible that there might be 
 some rumors to be gathered even of that land 
 of shadows, the Pandataria of the gods ? In 
 her childhood dark, wild terrors had haunted 
 certain places, and times, and people. She 
 had heard of incantations and fearful half- 
 barbarous rites powerful to evoke the dead, 
 of divinations into the future. 
 
 There were caverns among the hills, one it 
 was said even on the Roman Aventine, which 
 led no one had fathomed whither, haunted by 
 strange voices. There were legends of moun- 
 tains having throbbed and quivered, as if 
 some gigantic heart beat beneath them. There 
 were fountains which bubbled up hot and tur- 
 bid, as if they were escaping from some fiery 
 world below. 
 
 Could these be gateways into that under- 
 world ? 
 
 For her all their terror was gone. 
 
 What were earthquakes, and thunders, and 
 sulphurous flames, and angry infernal voices 
 as of monsters disturbed in uneasy sleep, and 
 all the vulgar terrors which guarded those 
 approaches to the unknown, to her? 
 
 For her, all visionary terrors had vanished 
 before the memorv of that one beautiful, 
 14*
 
 322 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 peaceful, irresponsive face, and those still cold 
 hands. If this under-world were indeed the 
 dwelling-place of her sister, the darkest witch- 
 cavern that led to it would to her be brighter 
 than the sunniest porch of the brightest home 
 on earth, more home-like than its inmost 
 hearth. 
 
 The more she mused on ft, the more fasci- 
 nation that dim under-world had for her. 
 
 Olympus, with its golden thrones, its sunny 
 heights, its easy, feasting, joyous revellers, 
 faded into a childish poesy, a nursery ballad ; 
 Apollo, Aurora, Diana, and even Jove, seemed 
 mere children, mere transitory beings, beside 
 those solemn, gray old gods of the older sway. 
 
 The real world was not an Olympus, whose 
 gods and goddesses might dissolve into morn- 
 ing clouds, into sunbeams and moonbeams ; 
 it was not here, in this world of stage-players, 
 of dust and delusion ; but below, where the 
 ancient gods reigned, and men had to abide 
 for ever; that awful permanent world with 
 its rivers of fire and of forgetfulness, its dim, 
 fair fields lighted not by sun or moon. 
 
 The mystic name of Hecate came to her 
 again and again, as if muttered in hollow cav- 
 erns of the past. She remembered how Da- 
 maris, the Athenian slave, used to mutter it in 
 low tones, to the terror of her childhood. 
 
 Hecate, older than all the gods adored in
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 323 
 
 fair marble temples ; though worshiped only 
 in caves and dark places of the earth. Having 
 had a right to reign as much prior to that of 
 Jove, as that of Jove to Tiberius Cassar. And, 
 according to general belief, reigning still. 
 Reigning in the under-world. And, it was 
 rumored, not only there. Honored even by 
 the immortal gods. Worshiped with secret 
 mystic rites, dimly looming on the eyes of 
 men in monstrous symbolical forms three- 
 headed, with the face of a horse, of a dog, of 
 a lion. Reigning over the spirits of the dead, 
 but also over the chase, and the sea ; able to 
 bestow good on the young, to whom this sun- 
 lit world was still the reality ; herself the god- 
 dess of the moon, of night, of the unseen. 
 
 Recollections came on her, too, of ancient 
 mysteries of Eleusis, giving hope, it was said, 
 of the future life ; and of Oriental mystics 
 Essenes, Therapeutas mystics who held the 
 body to be a prison, and death a liberation. 
 
 She determined to travel anywhere, and go 
 through anything, to be initiated. 
 
 And meantime there were still necroman- 
 cers and magicians at Rome. 
 
 Banished by edict after edict, the anxious 
 hearts of men called them back again and 
 again. Emperors condemned and consulted 
 them. When, on the height of prosperity, 
 the sense of the hidden precipices around
 
 324 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 made the brain dizzy, and the very brightness 
 of the present made the future a dread, the 
 strongest and most matter-of-fact intellects 
 yielded to the fascination of a promised 
 glimpse into the darkness before them. 
 Through the stars, through the throbbing 
 hearts of slain beasts, through voices in oracu- 
 lar caverns, through magic rings and mirrors 
 any outlet was sought from the uncertainty 
 which shrouds the next step of the securest 
 and sunniest life. 
 
 Or, again, when all the best light and 
 warmth had passed from the present, and the 
 personal future, as with Clcelia Diodora, had 
 ceased to interest because it could not restore 
 the past, then a deeper and mightier fascina- 
 tion drew the heart to those who professed to 
 be able to pierce not merely the mists of the 
 future, but the deeper darkness of present 
 death to tell not what we shall be, but what 
 and where our beloved are. 
 
 With passionate longing the deformed girl 
 sought to wrest the dark secret from one 
 magician after another, spending her little 
 patrimony on one gloomy rite after another, 
 lavishing any money they asked her on the 
 sacrifices, which the witches said were re- 
 quired to open the lips of the silent gods. 
 
 But none of these rites brought her the 
 slightest comfort.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 325 
 
 Darkness, and sudden bursts of lurid light, 
 and sanguinary rites, and hollow voices in the 
 depths of caverns, and dim apparitions, and 
 all the paraphernalia of vulgar horrors, had 
 no terrors for her. They s did not thrill her 
 with any tremor, or quicken the beating of 
 her heart. Hope might indeed have dazzled 
 her perception, but not fear. And such hope 
 as would have stirred her, they never suc- 
 ceeded in awakening. 
 
 She believed it possible that those old un- 
 known gods might be moved by such myste- 
 rious rites. But when the magicians professed 
 to evoke the dead, and give her messages 
 from her sister, she only smiled. 
 
 " Lethe and Styx and Elysium, rivers of 
 fire or of forgetfulness, could not change her 
 thus !" she said. " If she is there, she is her- 
 self there. And this is not herself." 
 
 The daylight and reality of that pure love 
 was still too strong around her heart for 
 shadows of the twilight to deceive her. 
 
 Yet she went from one vain promise to 
 another. Each time to return more hopeless 
 to her watch by the urn in the Pomcerium, 
 and there to keep lonely watch again, until the 
 loneliness weighed on her like a roof of solid 
 darkness, the old longing came back on her 
 to lift it or pierce it by any means, and once 
 more she would roam restlessly about to seek
 
 326 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 some new entrance into that solemn under- 
 world. 
 
 At last one name was mentioned to her, as 
 that of no vulgar witch, but of a mighty for- 
 eign sorceress, who had learned in Thessaly 
 spells of irresistible potency, which would 
 compel the infernal powers, and even Hecate 
 herself, to surrender the secrets of the under- 
 world. 
 
 One still gray night she met this woman 
 alone by appointment in a clearing of a wood 
 near the Tiber, a place avoided by day and 
 never approached at night by the people 
 around on account of dark memories of treach- 
 erous murder which haunted it. 
 
 On one side lay a pool, left by the river 
 when at high flood, deep and sullen, with un- 
 wholesome stagnant growths, only swept at 
 rare intervals by the tide of fresh waters. 
 
 Around was a marsh, treacherous with mud 
 and black pools, where frogs croaked, and 
 slimy creatures crept and plashed. Through 
 the shades of the neighboring bushes rose a 
 cross with a blackened horror still hanging on 
 it. Underneath was a mound of dank suspi- 
 cious greenness ; murderer and murdered, it 
 was believed, compelled thus perpetually to 
 haunt each other. 
 
 The sorceress did not heed Diodora on her 
 first approach. She seemed to be gathering
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 327 
 
 poisonous herbs. When she perceived the 
 deformed girl, she rose to the full height of 
 her majestic stature. Her black unkempt 
 hair fell in masses on her shoulders, making a 
 not altogether unintentional resemblance to 
 the snakes of the Furies. Her dark keen eyes 
 gleamed with a penetrating flash, like those 
 of a beast of prey, more phosphorescent than 
 human, as they rested on the misshapen figure. 
 
 " Such as thou," she said, in a hollow voice, 
 grasping Diodora's arm with a muscular grasp 
 in her one hand, whilst a knife gleamed in her 
 other hand "such as thou and such as I 
 ought to suit. Of such are the sacrifices 
 whose blood delights those we seek." 
 
 Diodora's arm was bruised in her twist, but 
 she did not shrink. Her frank deep eyes met 
 those of the sorceress with a courage as de- 
 termined as her own. 
 
 "What dost thou want of me?" she re- 
 sumed. " Love potions are scarcely for thee. 
 It can scarcely be a question of a rival ! Hast 
 thou an enemy thou wouldst be avenged 
 upon?" 
 
 " I have no one wrong to avenge," said Di- 
 odora. " The world has not been my friend. 
 But there is vengeance and misery enough in 
 it to satisfy the most malignant. To watch 
 the end that must come to all the joy would 
 be enough. One need not act."
 
 328 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " What wouldst thou have, then?" the sor- 
 ceress said. " Such payment as thou wouldst 
 offer is not likely to reward me. I might 
 have given thee vengeance for nothing. Such 
 work is its own reward. I, at all events, have 
 wrongs which make one drop of vengeance 
 sweet." 
 
 " I do not want to make any one more 
 wretched," Diodora said. " I do not hope to 
 be made happy. I only want to know.' 1 
 
 " To know what is to happen to thee?" ask- 
 ed the sorceress scornfully. " Can that matter 
 so much ? Eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die." 
 
 " To know what is happening to my sister," 
 was the low-toned reply. 
 
 Merely to mention that dear name to such 
 ears seemed to desecrate it ; yet, having come 
 so far, she would not give up the hope. 
 
 " They tell me you have learned potent 
 charms in Thessaly, strong to pierce the un- 
 seen." 
 
 " Blood of innocent babes, eyelids of mur- 
 derers, such as he you see rotting there in the 
 thicket." 
 
 And she ran through a ghastly catalogue 
 of horrors. Diodora shuddered ; but her lip 
 curled scornfully. 
 
 " I thought you knew some mighty words 
 of old !" she said at last, turning away. " I 

 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 339 
 
 will never pollute her memory with vulgar 
 witches cruelties. I will never believe she is 
 in the power of beings who could be propiti- 
 ated by such abominations." 
 
 " You will never believe !" laughed the sor- 
 ceress scornfully. " Are things changed by 
 your or my believing? Will your not believ- 
 ing the iniquities of Capreee make it pure ? I 
 know at least some of the secrets of that under- 
 world. Why should not poisons and spells be 
 as acceptable to the Powers of the ancient 
 under- world as to that?" 
 
 Clcelia Diodora paused a moment. Then 
 she said, 
 
 " She would not have had me rescue her 
 even from Tiberius by such means as you 
 speak of. Now that I cannot rescue her, 
 wherever she is, I will never dishonor her 
 memory by gratifying my own longing to 
 know, at such a cost." 
 
 And she turned away. 
 
 But again the strong grasp was on her arm, 
 and this time the knife flashed, and between 
 closed teeth the sorceress hissed the words 
 before her face. 
 
 " You are an Informer. You have been 
 bribed to betray me to the Emperor. You 
 shall not leave this so easily. There is some- 
 thing you can give me worth my having. 
 And that is your misshapen self."
 
 330 V 10 SORT OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Cloelia smiled, something of the old radiant 
 smile, without scorn or malice. 
 
 " Thus you would fulfil my longing indeed," 
 she said. " There is one way in which you 
 can open to me secrets I long for. Dying, I 
 shall know ; for perhaps I shall meet my dead. 
 We shall know together, my Vestal, my Beau- 
 tiful !" 
 
 The fierce grasp relaxed, and the fierce fea- 
 tures relaxed also. 
 
 " Child," said the sorceress, after a pause, 
 "you want what I cannot give. You have 
 what I cannot give cannot give back to my- 
 self." And the hard hands covered the rigid 
 face. " You have love. Such courage comes 
 only from love, and from despair. When love 
 died to me, I found another way from despair. 
 But the love was different. Go, and come 
 not near to reproach me again." 
 
 Slowly the maiden retraced her steps 
 through the solitary wood, and not till late 
 that night did she reach the place of her vigils 
 in the Pomcerium. There she clasped the 
 marble once more, and felt almost as if she 
 were pressing her cheek against the dear sis- 
 terly hand. 
 
 " See, my Beautiful," she said ; " I would 
 not purchase even tidings of thee by anything 
 thou wouldst not have had me do. Surely I 
 cannot grow nearer thee by growing wicked."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 33! 
 
 And ere long she fell into a heavy exhausted 
 sleep, with something of the feeling of one 
 who sleeps on a battle-field after a victory, 
 leaning against the stone. 
 
 And there the next morning old Laon, and 
 Siguna, returned from her long fruitless search 
 in the North for Olave, found the poor crouch- 
 ing form and the worn face pressed against 
 the Vestal's tomb. They watched her long 
 in silence. Sleep seemed so absolutely the 
 only repose left her on earth, that at first they, 
 who loved and pitied her so truly, rather 
 hoped than feared that sleep might prove the 
 long last sleep. 
 
 Before the dawn had quite passed into day 
 she awoke. Half rising, but still leaning against 
 the marble, she stretched out a hand to each. 
 
 " You have not found anything !" she said, 
 meeting Siguna's wistful gaze. " I have lost 
 everything. Laon, Laon !" she exclaimed, 
 passionately, rising and throwing herself at 
 his feet, "take me to Athens. Socrates was 
 content with guessing, thinking. But that 
 was only for himself. I must know ! know ! 
 Somewhere, somewhere the secret must have 
 pierced through, if there is any secret to 
 know. Let me be initiated in the mysteries. 
 Men say they speak tidings there of the dead. 
 Take me to Athens, to the ancient mysteries, 
 that I may know."
 
 332 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " Child," he said, mournfully, " was not 
 Socrates at Athens ? What could the myste- 
 ries there tell thee but that thousands of years 
 since men hoped, as thou and I must hope 
 now ? There is but one way by which men 
 enter in and know." 
 
 She fixed her eyes with a deprecatory look 
 on his, almost as if defending herself against 
 an accusation of cowardice. " I think you are 
 right," she said. " But that way I promised 
 her never to open to myself. She made me 
 promise, for her sake and for yours, Laon." 
 
 The old man's eyes moistened. 
 
 " She thought of old Laon then at the last," 
 he said. 
 
 " And of Siward," she replied. " Is her 
 wish fulfilled ?" 
 
 " At first the proud boy had a struggle with 
 himself," Laon said, with a choked voice ; " he 
 had all but earned his own emancipation. 
 And he remembered words she spoke to him 
 years since in my old workshop. Freedom, 
 she said, was better earned than given. But 
 at last he consented to accept the boon. From 
 her dying hands, he told me to tell you, he 
 deemed his freedom a more sacred treasure 
 than if he had won it with his own. There 
 was a strange bond between those two," he 
 added. " The boy has moved about gently 
 and gravely as a woman since he heard she
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 333 
 
 was gone. He said the sweetest light the 
 world had held, or would ever hold, for him, 
 had died out of it for ever." 
 
 And Siguna the mother did not resent the 
 words.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 NCE more Siguna was sailing east- 
 ward over the Mediterranean Sea. 
 Her last voyage had been as a slave 
 in the household of Germanicus the 
 Conqueror, with Si ward and little Hilda, all 
 in bondage. 
 
 Thirteen years had passed, and now the 
 three were free. 
 
 Siward was keeping the armourer's work- 
 shop at Antioch, which was to be the support 
 of his mother, of old Laon, and of Cloelia Dio- 
 dora. But it was to Hilda's little household 
 the mother's heart most yearned, to the three 
 fair children growing up around her child and 
 Callias. 
 
 Siguna had grown graver and more ab- 
 stracted since her fruitless search for Olave in 
 the North. Not that the hope of yet seeing 
 him again in life had died from her heart. It 
 had only been driven deeper in. Some day 
 she still believed she should hear the familiar 
 
 (334)
 
 VICTORY OF TEE VANQUISHED. 335 
 
 voice again. And it was her fixed intention 
 (though she communicated it to no one), when 
 she had seen her children at Antioch, to re- 
 turn and dwell at Rome, that not one com- 
 pany of captives might arrive from the North 
 which she might not see and question. 
 
 The sight of the Grecian cities and islands 
 recalled to her many things in the past. She 
 thought of the brilliant life cut short, and the 
 noble manly form laid low at Epidaphne. She 
 thought of the lofty spirit, then so full of song 
 and love, that could not be broken by years 
 of peril and suspicion and petty household 
 tyranny, now hopelessly wearing itself out in 
 the solitary exile of Pandataria. She hoped 
 with trembling that the little share of pros- 
 perity and happiness which had come to her 
 Hilda was not bright enough to arouse the 
 " envy of the gods." 
 
 Many consultations, meanwhile, did she and 
 Laon hold how it would be possible to awaken, 
 not to pleasure (that mattered little), but to 
 something of living interest, the poor bereaved 
 girl. 
 
 Laon's heart was very heavy on her ac- 
 count. He was conscious of having felt a 
 little thrill of satisfaction at the thought of 
 having his child entirely to himself. 
 
 For some time he would not confess it ; but 
 at last, as they left Athens, he said to Siguna,
 
 336 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 into whose quiet heart every one naturally 
 poured their troubles, 
 
 " I had thought, foolish old man that I was, 
 that I could yet give her bright days. I had 
 furnished the little home at Antioch as daintily 
 for her as I knew how, and had reserved a 
 little stock of coin wherewith she might pur- 
 chase those fancies and finishes that women 
 love, that she might think she had made it 
 bright for me herself, as women like to do. I 
 had visions of her rich soft voice ringing 
 through the rooms in her old Latin lays and 
 Greek songs, making it more musical to me 
 than all the groves of Epidaphne. And I 
 thought Siward would listen as we worked. 
 And now she is not here at, all. Far nearer 
 me when I was at Antioch toiling for her, and 
 she at Rome with the Vestal. See how her 
 spirit is looking far, far away ! Seeing, she 
 sees not ; and hearing, she hears not ; living, 
 she lives not. The whole world has become 
 ghostly to her." 
 
 " She is very gentle and kind," said Siguna, 
 apologetically. " She tries hard to be with 
 us, and do what she can for you." 
 
 " The more she tries to hide it from me, the 
 more I feel it," he replied. " She will work 
 for me, read to me, listen, talk for me ; any- 
 thing but live. The little fragment of her life 
 and love I had while her sister lived, was
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 337 
 
 f worth more than the whole of her thoughts 
 and time now. For it was a living portion of 
 her living self. And now she is but as a ghost 
 unnaturally compelled by some witch's art to 
 animate again a wounded body it was panting 
 to leave, to erect itself, and move and speak 
 'in a ghastly semblance of life far more terrible 
 than death." 
 
 " Even here, in this Athens," he continued, 
 " that we loved to speak about together in 
 the old days at Rome, as if to see it together 
 would be a joy too great for her to hope for, 
 she cared for none of the glorious temples, 
 the hills, the battle-fields, the statues, the 
 groves I had told her of until she knew them 
 familiarly as the way from the Ccelian to her' 
 sister in the Temple of Vesta, or to my work- 
 shop. Only once she awoke from that cour- 
 teous attention in which she sits as a guest 
 perpetually entertained at some stranger's 
 board, to something of her old eager intensity. 
 It was in the cave of the Eumenides. ' Men 
 believed this was a portal to the under-world/ 
 she said. ' Here I should like to stay and 
 die.' And she knelt down and embraced the 
 stones. That gloomy cave was fairer to her 
 than the Parthenon. It was more homelike 
 than that little home at Antioch will ever be, 
 the home I have been preparing her with such 
 love and hope for years." 
 15
 
 338 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Thus these three wrecks, tossed together 
 by winds and waves from shores so far apart, 
 drifted on to the shores of Syria, knowing 
 nothing of what awaited them there.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 HE autumn sun was shining tranquil- 
 ly on Judaea ; in the valleys, on 
 silent fields, lately laughing and 
 singing with the songs of harvest, 
 now gray with stubble ; on the hill-sides, on 
 lonely vineyards, with their gathered grapes 
 and their deserted lodges and towers, lately 
 echoing with the shouts of the vintage ; or on 
 olive-groves lightened of their fruit. The 
 corn, the wine, and the oil, had been gathered 
 in. And the blank and stillness of the old age 
 of autumn had succeeded the festivities of its 
 youth. 
 
 Yet there seemed to the three travellers 
 something more than the usual autumnal 
 quiet over the land. In the villages the clat- 
 ter of their asses' hoofs on the Roman roads 
 brought out only a few women and little 
 children, and occasionally an infirm old man, 
 to gaze on them. 
 
 (339)
 
 340 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Now and then an eager group passed them 
 laden with bunches of citron, with palm 
 branches, or boughs of the gray willows from 
 the brooks. 
 
 " It is some feast of the Jews," Laon said ; 
 " some of the patriotic gatherings by which 
 their wise old Lawgiver bound them to- 
 gether." 
 
 When they reached the City they found it. 
 transformed into a garden, into a semblance 
 of that golden Jerusalem where the Paradise 
 and the City are blended ; with the fountains 
 clear as crystal, the leaves of the trees with 
 twelve manner of fruit in the midst of the 
 street, and the light of the perpetual festival 
 making night as bright as day. 
 
 The flat roofs were embowered in thick 
 foliage. The courts of the houses and of the 
 Temple, and even of the streets, were green 
 with branches entwined into temporary dwel- 
 lings. The whole city had become a forest, 
 the inhabitants children of the forest. The 
 imagination of Siguna, the child of the North- 
 ern forest, went back to her old woodland 
 home in the Lippe valley. 
 
 " Were those Jews also," she asked of Laon, 
 " once foresters, as we Germans are ? Do 
 they keep this feast in remembrance of their 
 early home ?" 
 
 But Laon was never communicative con-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 341 
 
 cerning the Jews ; and Siguna was left to her 
 own conjectures for an explanation. 
 
 Few of the branches were such as her own 
 forests could have furnished. Glossy myrtle 
 boughs were entwined with gray olive 
 branches ; some of the huts were roofed alto- 
 gether with palms ; some leafy bowers there 
 were of sycamore and pine. There was a 
 variety in the size as in the foliage. The Feast 
 being a family festival, as those of the Hebrew 
 nation were, these bowers were little tempor- 
 ary homes, adapted to the numbers or the 
 wealth of the family : some, humble little 
 dwarf huts ; some, vaults of greenery twenty 
 feet high. 
 
 Evening and morning joyous bands made 
 processions through the streets, carrying 
 large bunches of fruit ; fathers, mothers, 
 youths, and maidens, and little children. 
 
 In the morning vessels of water were car- 
 ried from a fountain of Siloam, and poured, 
 with wine, in libations on the altar. 
 
 At night the city was lighted up with count- 
 less, lamps and torches gleaming among the 
 green bowers, or borne with song and dance 
 through the streets, as they went in festive 
 procession by the Beautiful Gate to the Court 
 of the Women. Then all the light of the city 
 seemed concentrated around the Four Great 
 Lamps which illuminated the Temple, and
 
 342 VICTORY OF THff VANQUISHED. 
 
 cast their radiance far and wide from the 
 Temple heights over cloister, courts, and em- 
 bowered roofs. 
 
 There, around the Great Light of the Tem- 
 ple of the City, while, the priests played on 
 instruments and chanted sacred songs on the 
 steps leading to the inner courts, the nation 
 gathered together in families. When the 
 music of the priests ceased, the people waved 
 their boughs of golden fruit, the citrons shin- 
 ing among the glossy leaves ; and the sacred 
 courts echoed with family and national rejoic- 
 ing, with the dance and song of the people, 
 who were taught (had they only understood 
 it) to connect all their rejoicings with home 
 and with God. 
 
 The joy of harvest, the joy of rest after toil, 
 of a home after long wanderings, in memory 
 of that first feast of tabernacles, when their 
 fathers at Succoth left the brown tents of the 
 wilderness for the leafy bowers of their own 
 promised land, all this was flowing in symbol 
 beneath the hilarity of that most poetical fes- 
 tival. And to many a thoughtful eye, no 
 doubt, which had " kept watch o'er man's 
 mortality," it brought thoughts of the tran- 
 sitory nature of all earthly homes (all indeed 
 tabernacles, so soon to be taken down, and 
 fading before they fall) : vibrations of the 
 deep music of the ancient singers trembling
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 343 
 
 through all the mirth, " A stranger and so- 
 journer with thee, as all thy fathers were ; " 
 perhaps also dim visions of a rest yet to 
 come. 
 
 Even Cloelia Diodor^a (by a perversity in- 
 herent in woman, Laon thought) woke up to 
 something like interest in this strange trans- 
 formation of the City into the Forest. 
 
 " Legends, mere legends of an obscure, 
 boastful tribe," Laon would say in answer to 
 her inquiries. " Why should you wish to 
 know ? They have a tradition of years of 
 wandering through a great wilderness, of 
 bread rained on them from heaven, of desert 
 rocks made to burst forth in living springs for 
 their thirst. The histories of all people have 
 their birth-place in some far-off land of mist 
 and marvel. All people have their festivities, 
 more or less mystical and rapturous, at the 
 ingathering of the harvest, in spring, and in 
 autumn. Only this people has interwoven its 
 history more skilfully than most with this 
 worship of Nature, and has the advantage of 
 purifying its festivities by coming to them in 
 families." 
 
 But the whole joyous scene made a deep 
 impression on the Roman maiden. Unlike 
 most joy, it did not jar upon her. There ran 
 through it a tone of patriotic fervor and of 
 religious solemnity which touched her.
 
 344 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Moreover, she could not get out of her 
 mind the sacred songs of the old Jew by the 
 Fountain of Egeria. 
 
 She interpreted this national rejoicing 
 through the look of love and joy she had 
 seen on his face. 
 
 And again and again she entreated Siguna 
 to tell her every detail of that stranger's dy- 
 ing hours ; again and again, as a child listens 
 unwearied to a favorite story. 
 
 The story of that spirit meeting death so 
 solemnly awake, fearing as Siguna had never 
 seen any of her people fear, hoping as none 
 they knew had ever hoped, fearing and loving 
 some One he was going to meet in that un- 
 seen world, was more to Diodora than any- 
 thing. 
 
 And here in this festive City, by that Temple 
 towards which the old man used to turn, the 
 tones of his thin feeble voice came back to 
 her, as if echoed by the voice of a great mul- 
 titude ; until one night she said to Siguna, as 
 to Laon at the cave of Eumenides, 
 
 " Here I should like to stay and live or 
 die. It seems to me as if the entrance to that 
 unseen world might after all be here, even 
 here." 
 
 Neither of them knew anything of the sacri- 
 ficial rites on which these festivities were 
 based ; how, evening and morning the slain
 
 VICTORY OF TEE VANQUISHED. 345 
 
 lamb yielded up its meek life on the altar; 
 and not wine only and pure water, but the 
 blood of a spotless victim had to flow there. 
 
 Not sheaves of ripe corn only and bunches 
 of golden fruit, not joy only and thanksgiving 
 and the voice of melody waved and echoed 
 through those cloistered courts. Life was 
 sacrificed there daily, not with ease and joy, 
 but in pain and death. 
 
 The worship of that Temple was no glitter- 
 ing garlanded ice-palace, built over the un- 
 recognized abyss. 
 
 It dared to recognize the chasms which rend 
 humanity without and within. It dared to 
 look in the face the terrible mystery which 
 characterizes our race from all creatures in 
 the universe, separating it from the instinctive 
 innocent life below, and from the holy love of 
 the life above. It dared to look this terrible 
 distinction in the face, and to name it ; to call 
 it sin, a " treading over " holy barriers of 
 Divine law, a ''falling short" of a holy ideal 
 of goodness, a " going astray " from the living 
 God. 
 
 It dared to call this world not 'a Paradise, 
 but a wilderness ; and our race a race of exiles 
 and pilgrims ; and to appeal to generation 
 after generation as wandering and fallen from 
 something they should and might have been. 
 
 It dared perpetually to bear witness to this 
 15*
 
 346 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 mystery of sin and need of reconciliation, by 
 the perpetual sacrifices offered in its Temple. 
 
 And at the same time it dared to bear per- 
 petual witness by its prophets to the worth- 
 lessness of these sacrifices, in themselves, to 
 please Him who could only be pleased by the 
 sacrifice of self, by the death of sin and the 
 life of righteousness, by ceasing to do evil and 
 learning to do well. 
 
 Of this the Roman maiden and the German 
 mother as yet knew little. 
 
 But Laon, going in and out among the 
 crowd, impatient to pursue his journey, yet 
 unable in the excitement of the national fes- 
 tival to find any means of doing so, began to 
 be aware of a tremor of unusual expectation 
 agitating the multitudes to and fro, as if 
 something were wanting to complete the 
 feast. 
 
 Not loud, eager discussion as of some 
 political event, acknowledged and expected 
 by all ; not dark, fierce words, as in one of 
 the countless national conspiracies against the 
 Roman rule, which kept the vacillating gov- 
 ernor in such ceaseless anxiety between his 
 desire to please the Emperor and the Jews. 
 The province for the time was tranquil, what- 
 ever volcanic fires might be slumbering be- 
 neath. The considerate policy of Tiberius 
 Caesar in keeping the same governor longer
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 347 
 
 than usual in office, that the publicans who 
 lived on the provinces, " as flies on a wounded 
 man," being left in peace, might be satiated, 
 had in its measure succeeded. The images 
 of Csesar and his Eagle standards were still 
 kept far from Jerusalem. Pilate having irri- 
 tated the Jews by transferring his army into 
 Jerusalem, and venturing to insult their relig- 
 ion as no previous governor had done, by in- 
 troducing the " idolatrous " standards into the 
 Holy City, had taught them the lesson by 
 which they afterwards so fatally profited, that 
 to a sufficiently determined resistance he 
 would yield any conviction of his own. 
 
 It was no ordinary political excitement 
 which stirred the crowd at that feast. Yet 
 Laon became more and more aware of an un- 
 easy movement of expectation beneath all the 
 tumult of feasting. " Much murmuring among 
 the people ; " like the rustle of leaves before a 
 tempest like the stir of birds and breezes be- 
 fore a dawn like the low murmur of a crowd 
 waiting for some expected procession of a 
 prince or a conqueror, of whose approach 
 there have been long rumors. 
 
 " Muck murmuring among the people concern- 
 ing Him'' Those in high places " seeking 
 Him at the feast," with no friendly purpose. 
 
 The people divided, some saying, " He is a 
 good man ; " others, " Nay ; but He deceiveth
 
 348 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 the people." Yet no man speaking openly, 
 because of the ill-will of those in high places, 
 not among the Roman rulers, but among their 
 own. 
 
 " They seem expecting some great One in 
 the City," he said one evening to the Roman 
 girl. In a moment the listless look passed 
 from Cloelia Diodora's face. 
 
 " Now ? " she asked eagerly. " Here ? " 
 
 Laon half wished to withdraw his words, so 
 intense was the earnestness of her questioning 
 eyes. And yet he could not but rejoice to 
 see her awakened to hope once more by any- 
 thing. 
 
 " Can it be the King the old man was look- 
 ing for? " she asked, after a pause. 
 
 " The Jews are always looking for a King 
 a Deliverer ; always thinking they have found 
 one ; and always finding their mistake. Noth- 
 ing like the Roman lictor's rods for crushing 
 fanaticism ! But just now it scarcely seems a 
 King they are looking for. The people speak 
 of a "good man ; " of words unlike any man 
 ever spake before ; of a life of ceaseless acts 
 of kindness, of cures of the sick and maimed, 
 and distributions of food miraculous, some 
 say, as if the old childlike days of legend and 
 marvel were coming back ; which is certainly 
 not likely in this old, hard, incredulous world 
 of ours."
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 349 
 
 Cloelia drank in every word. But she said 
 no more. 
 
 The next day, the old man came back more 
 silent than usual. During the evening meal 
 he said nothing, or only some light words 
 about their journey. 
 
 Afterwards he paced up and down the 
 chamber restlessly. He felt Clcelia's ques- 
 tioning eyes on him, and she felt the uneasi- 
 ness he would not confess, but knew of old 
 how inconvenient questions were apt to seal, 
 instead of opening her old friend's lips. At 
 last he asked her to recite him something from 
 one of Plato's Dialogues. 
 
 She began, but could not proceed. The 
 familiar words recalled too much. She sat 
 mute and tearless, with that look into the dis- 
 tance which he dreaded. 
 
 Then he forgot all but the desire to soothe 
 her and recall her to the present. 
 
 " The multitudes are more restless than ever 
 to-day," he said. "They say He for whom 
 they were looking has come, and has been 
 teaching openly in the midst of the Temple. 
 That He has accused the Jewish Council of 
 seeking to kill Him. Some of the people deny 
 this, and say it is a delusion. But some mur- 
 mur that it is true." 
 
 And again, afterwards, when he came in 
 finally at night, the old man said,
 
 350 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " He seems to have been right in his appre- 
 hensions. Some strange spell seems to lie on 
 rulers and people. The Council has sought 
 to take Him. He has no followers to defend 
 Him; no friends, that I can hear of, but a few 
 unarmed Galileans. He does not seem even 
 to seek to reign, or to displace any one who 
 is reigning. Why, then, should the rulers 
 of His people dread and hate Him ? Or 
 why, if they hate Him, can they not silence 
 Him?" 
 
 " Laon," said the Roman girl, " can not we 
 hear Him ? I would give worlds to listen to 
 Him." 
 
 " He speaks in the Temple," Laon said. 
 " No Gentile may enter there. To-day some 
 of the people are enraged against Him, be- 
 cause He said He would be with them but for 
 a little while longer, and would go whither 
 they could not come. They think He meant 
 he would go and teach the Gentiles." 
 
 "The Gentiles? Ourselves!" Clcelia ex- 
 claimed, starting up, her whole face brighten- 
 ing. " Can this be possible ? " 
 
 "I know not. What can it matter?" said 
 Laon, scornfully. " Would you leave Socrates 
 and Plato for this Galilean?" 
 
 " I never heard Socrates or Plato," she said, 
 sadly. " If they were living, and I could ask 
 them anything, it might be different. But
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 35! 
 
 they always seem to stop just when I most 
 want to know more." 
 
 " Impatient heart of woman !" Laon ex- 
 claimed. " I thought my Diodora had been 
 wiser, and would be content to poise herself 
 patiently on probabilities and wait. I thought 
 there was one woman above the vulgar crav- 
 ings of religion, able to live on truth ! " 
 
 The next evening Laon came home appar- 
 ently relieved. 
 
 " At last we may escape from this fanatical 
 city ! " he said. " The Feast is over, and my 
 mind at last is at rest about this Galilean. No 
 calm patience of waiting there, no wise con- 
 tentment with probabilities. No second So- 
 crates is here. No patient seeker after truth, 
 refusing to be called wise, declaring himself 
 only a lover of wisdom, turning his followers 
 from himself to truth. 
 
 " Every day of this feast the festivities have 
 concentrated around two symbols. Every 
 morning, before breaking fast, they have 
 drawn fresh water from the rocky well in the 
 valley below the Temple, and poured it with 
 a tumult of joy on the altar; in memory, some 
 say, of the thirst of their forefathers having 
 been quenched by water miraculously smitten 
 from a rock in the desert. 
 
 " Every evening there has been music and
 
 352 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 dancing around the Four Great Lamps in the 
 Women's Court of the Temple. 
 
 " And to-day they say this Galilean cried 
 aloud in that court of the Temple, ' If any man 
 thirst, let him come unto Me and drink ;' pro- 
 claiming openly that He Himself is able to 
 satisfy the thirst of every man ; and that He 
 Himself is the Light of the world. No resem- 
 blance to Socrates there ! " 
 
 " It was much to promise ! " said Clcelia. 
 " For there is much darkness in the world, and 
 much thirst in the hearts of men. Have they 
 silenced Him ? " 
 
 " Silenced Him ! No !" said the old man 
 impatiently. " The people are infatuated. The 
 debates and divisions among them run higher 
 than ever. At last their rulers sent armed 
 officers into the Temple to take Him as He 
 taught. It does not seem that either He or 
 any one offered any resistance. But the armed 
 men stood paralyzed, they say, before Him, 
 listening listening like all the rest. I did not 
 hear that He professed to startle them by any 
 wonder-working. There is a great rumor of 
 His miracles. But just then there was noth- 
 ing of the kind. Nothing but words. They 
 say He speaks with authority, and not as their 
 scribes. The armed men went back to the 
 magistrates without their prisoner. And all 
 they could say in their defence was, that
 
 VICTORY OF TIIE VANQUISHED. 353 
 
 ' never man spake like this man.' A fanatical 
 people ! A people of dangerous enthusiasms ! 
 And fanaticism is infectious," said Laon im- 
 patiently. " I will not stay another day in the 
 place. The feast is over. People can attend 
 to ordinary affairs again. To-morrow we start 
 for Tiberias and Antioch." 
 
 " Laon ! " Clcelia exclaimed, " let me stay 
 here. I would give the world to hear that 
 voice. I am only a poor impatient woman, 
 and long for one word only one word from 
 some one who could speak with authority." 
 
 But Laon was immovable. 
 
 " If there were any truth in this," he said at 
 last, "they would hear more of it, and she 
 might come again. And, meantime, nothing 
 should induce him to expose her to any of 
 these detestable Oriental superstitions. Had 
 not the Jews and Egyptians been long since 
 banished from Rome for the best reasons? 
 Moreover, this Galifean, it was said, only 
 taught Jews, only healed Jews. What was 
 the use of lingering outside the walls of that 
 Temple, just to hear Jewish rumors of what 
 was said and done inside ? Perhaps it might 
 prove true that He intended to go to the 
 Gentiles to teach the Gentiles. In that case, 
 she was more likely to hear him at Antioch 
 than at Jerusalem." 
 
 Still she pleaded to be suffered to stay, till
 
 354 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 at last Laon had recourse to an argument 
 strong from his lips, because he was too 
 generous to use it without reluctance. He 
 reminded her of the life he had rescued, of 
 the long toil he had gone through for her ; 
 and, lastly, how her dying sister had given her 
 as a last charge to do what she could for him. 
 
 Duty, as she interpreted it, prevailed with 
 the Roman maiden ; and the next day Laon, 
 Clcelia, and Siguna went northward to 
 Antioch, hoping in their way to see Hilda and 
 Callias at Tiberias. 
 
 But all the way the feeling grew stronger 
 and stronger in Diodora's heart that she was 
 flying from the only voice in the world that 
 could tell her of her dead, or bring one drop 
 of living water to her parched heart. 
 
 Up and down the rocky hills of Judasa, as 
 they rode in silence one after another along 
 the stony paths, by every village fountain, 
 through every starry night, those words rang 
 in her heart, " If any man thirst, let him 
 come unto Me and drink ; " and " I am the 
 Light of the world." 
 
 " Of the world ! " she thought ; " that is more 
 than Judsea and Galilee. Perhaps more than 
 this world, than all the visible world to- 
 gether." 
 
 Memories of healing and of teaching 
 lingered around many a city and village
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 355 
 
 through which they passed. Not through 
 Judsea and Galilee only, but through Samaria, 
 sacred footsteps had been before them. 
 
 One Samaritan at least was walking with 
 healthy limbs amongst those hills, who had 
 knelt there once a suppliant leper ; and once 
 again a grateful healed man at the feet of the 
 Healer. 
 
 One Samaritan woman, at least, could not 
 have forgotten the voice of Him who had 
 known all the sin of her life, and satisfied all 
 the thirst of her heart. 
 
 In one city of Samaria, at least, after two 
 days of those marvelous words, confirmed, as 
 far as we know, by no miracle, the Galilean 
 had been welcomed as "the Christ, the 
 Saviour," not of the Jews only, " but of the 
 world." 
 
 But Laon would not linger. He hurried on 
 as if he felt there were enchantment in the air, 
 and his child might be fascinated away from 
 him against her will and his. 
 
 Around the shores of Galilee they delayed 
 longer. Laon hoped to have found Callias the 
 Greek sculptor. He had been there not long 
 before, and was expected again. So at Ti- 
 berias they stayed some days. 
 
 And there again the traces of that life could 
 not be hidden.
 
 356 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Not among Rabbis or rulers, or only among 
 men, had those years of teaching and healing 
 penetrated. 
 
 Everywhere, in village and city, might be 
 found traces of His presence. 
 
 Women were there who had brought their 
 babes to Him to be blessed ; little children 
 that had felt His arms folded around them, 
 and had been conscious of the love, if they 
 could not comprehend the blessing. In every 
 village were some who had felt the glow of 
 healthy life consciously bounding again in 
 their veins at His touch ; deaf ears opened to 
 hear the murmuring ripples of that lake, the 
 stir of busy life on its shores, the tones of 
 His voice ; blind eyes unsealed to all the exu- 
 berant beauty of that fertile land ; one, at least, 
 that had been recalled from the land that old 
 world deemed a land of shadows. 
 
 In the streets of Tiberias, where they so- 
 journed, it was probable His feet had not 
 trodden. The tyrant who had murdered John 
 the Baptist was its founder and its prince. It 
 was a mere copy of Greek cities, with a ser- 
 vile Latin name ; the residence of a corrupt 
 mongrel court, and with such a population 
 as a hot-bed of foreign civilization would 
 foster. 
 
 But every village on the little bays, with its 
 little pier or beach for fishing-boats, had its
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 357 
 
 rumours of His recent words and deeds, and 
 of the inexplicable power of his presence. 
 
 An affectionate hope awoke in Siguna's 
 mind. Slow to receive new affections or new 
 teaching, what she had heard of those years 
 of healing had gradually sunk down deep into 
 the steadfast heart of the German mother. 
 
 Looking at the sorrowful deformed Roman 
 maiden, visions came to her of the possible 
 resting of those kind and mighty hands on the 
 shrunken form, of a transfiguring of the 
 shrivelled limbs into vigour and beauty, such 
 as might fit the brave loving heart and quick 
 intelligence now fettered and disguised within. 
 
 Once she spoke of this hope to Laon. The 
 old man solemnly forbade her ever to dare 
 breathe such a vain hope to Diodora. But 
 his own opposition grew fainter after the sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 To Diodora herself no such hope came for 
 an instant. She had been too long used to 
 herself and to suffering. 
 
 But by the waters which His quiet voice 
 had soothed at once from the storm to the 
 great calm, by the hill-sides on whose grassy 
 terraces He had made a feast for many thous- 
 ands of men, women, and children, fragments 
 of those Divine and most human words could 
 not fail to reach a heart that thirsted for them 
 as hers did.
 
 358 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 And of all she heard, one miracle that of 
 the raising of the young daughter of Jairus 
 most possessed her. It was not so much that 
 He had raised that young damsel from death, 
 as that, looking on her dead, He had said, 
 " She is not dead, but sleepeth" 
 
 Nothing would have induced her to leave 
 the shores where those words had been 
 spoken by the voice which was heard through 
 that sleep, but the promise from Laon and 
 Siguna that, when once they had reached 
 Antioch, they should, if she wished it, return 
 once more to Galilee, where, except during 
 the Feast at Jerusalem, His dwelling-place 
 was said chiefly to be. 
 
 In a few weeks they could return. Apart 
 from the crowds of the great city, on those 
 beaches and on those hill-sides open to all 
 alike, shut in by no jealous sacred walls of 
 Temple or Temple court, there might be a 
 hope of a poor desolate Gentile woman like 
 herself getting near enough to the outskirts 
 of the listening crowd to catch some frag- 
 ments of those words which seemed so 
 marvelously to disarm those who hated, and 
 to satisfy the inmost hearts of those who loved. 
 
 Three sayings lived and grew in her heart. 
 
 " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and 
 drink" 
 
 " I am the Light of the world"
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 359 
 
 And, dearer to her than all, 
 
 " She is not dead, but sleepeth! 
 
 At last a voice which spoke with certainty 
 as One who knew ; with authority, as One 
 who had a right to teach and to command ! 
 
 That Voice she had set her heart to hear, 
 or die ; or, better still, she thought, to hear 
 and die.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 HE national gatherings of the Jews, 
 when the nation was dispersed, as 
 it had been since the conquests of 
 
 J Alexander, secured a rapid circula- 
 
 tion of information most advantageous to 
 those who enjoyed it, in days when posts and 
 letters were never dreamed of, except as the 
 peculiar privileges of the wealthy or of those 
 in office. 
 
 Anything likely to affect the destinies of 
 the people vibrated swiftly from the centre to 
 the remotest point on the circumference. 
 
 The Romans knew well how, crossing, and 
 using the great lines of their roads, and sub- 
 tly intertwined in the great visible system of 
 their Empire with its focus at Rome, was 
 ever living and working this Jewish commu- 
 nity active, restless, pliant, indestructible, 
 with its focus at Jerusalem. 
 
 To it Rome was merely one out of many 
 centres of traffic ; the Empire but an incident 
 ( 3 6o)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED, 361 
 
 in the history of the Gentiles. Jerusalem was 
 the City of God, the centre of the world. 
 Thence, according to the Roman interpreta- 
 tion of the Jewish national Hope, were to 
 come the " mighty ones who were to be the 
 Sovereigns of the world." 
 
 Yet among the Jews themselves, as we 
 know, the differences in belief were very wide. 
 United by a common patriotism, their belief 
 had a latitude wider than could be claimed 
 for the freest community, whose bond was 
 entirely spiritual, and not ancestral. 
 
 The debated questions of the Synagogue 
 were the immortality, or the resurrection of 
 man, future retribution in any form, the exist- 
 ence of any spiritual creatures besides man, 
 the authenticity or Divine authority of three- 
 fourths of the Jewish Scriptures ; questions 
 which, it would seem to us, left very little 
 common ground for those who differed about 
 them, and very little religion of any kind for 
 those who held the negative side. 
 
 And, besides these differences which con- 
 vulsed the Jewish communities in Palestine, 
 there were the deep, though less obvious, dis- 
 similarities between the Hellenists and the 
 Hebrews, coloring the whole view of life pres- 
 ent and future, of the Sacred Books, and of 
 the Hope of the Messiah. 
 * The Alexandrian and the Galilean beliefs 
 16
 
 3-62 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED 
 
 as to the promised Deliverer, the Deliverance 
 He was to effect, the Kingdom He was to es- 
 tablish, were probably in some respects furth- 
 er apart than Plato and Moses. 
 
 Yet the great national Bond remained, that 
 great national Hope which turned the gaze 
 of the people on the future and not only on 
 the past. 
 
 It seems unquestionable that, in the days 
 of Tiberius Caesar, the whole Jewish nation, 
 with all its differences of culture, of interest, 
 and of belief, was restlessly surging and heav- 
 ing to and fro with that one passionate expec- 
 tation of a Deliverer close at hand, such as 
 has never stirred that nation, or any other na- 
 tion, before or since. 
 
 * -x- % * * 
 
 When Laon, Siguna, and Clcelia Diodora 
 reached Antioch, they found the little group 
 through which alone they, as Gentiles, had 
 any insight into the Jewish world, already 
 full of agination, in consequence of rumors 
 that had reached them from Palestine. 
 
 Here, also, as in every place where that 
 Name reached, " there was a division among 
 the people concerning Him." 
 
 Onias and Esther had heard, two or three 
 years before, of one like an ancient prophet, 
 living separate from common humanity, like 
 one of the former judges or seers dwelling
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 363 
 
 in the wilderness, yet gathering throngs from 
 the cities ; in the garb of the great mysteri- 
 ous prophet who had been rapt from earth in 
 a chariot of fire ; with the lightnings of his 
 brief burning sermons kindling the consci- 
 ences of the wicked and profane to repent- 
 ance and reformation, yet reserving his sever- 
 est denunciations for the professedly religious ; 
 scourging the publicans with whips and the 
 Pharisees with scorpions. 
 
 Such a mighty man, Onias thought, might 
 well be " He who was to come." 
 
 When he had purified to himself a band of 
 followers sufficiently devoted, he might raise 
 the standard of Israel on the hills beyond Jor- 
 dan, sweep a passage through the river like 
 Elijah, enter the land like Joshua, while the 
 Romans, like the Canaanites of old, would 
 flee before him, or remain to crouch under 
 his yoke. 
 
 For to Onias, as to the Roman courtier of 
 Augustus, the ideal of universal empire was 
 the enthronement of his own people as van- 
 quishers on Olympus, whilst the rest of the 
 world crouched bound below. 
 
 " O Lord, thou madest the world for our 
 sakes," said the Book of Esdras. " As for the 
 other people which also come of Adam, thou 
 hast said that they are nothing, but be like 
 unto spittle."
 
 364 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 But soon came the bewildering tidings that 
 the stern denouncer of sin absolutely dis- 
 claimed all power and all leadership for him- 
 self ; founded no school ; attempted no gath- 
 ering of the nation ; replied to the authorities 
 sent from Jerusalem formally to investigate 
 his credentials, by a series of disappointing 
 negations ; declared he was not the Messiah, 
 not Elijah, not the Prophet indeed, well- 
 nigh disclaimed all personality. Not as a 
 Prophet, a Rabbi, a Leader, not as a man at 
 all would he be recognized ; merely as " a 
 Voice!" "a Voice in the wilderness," smiting 
 rocks, opening fountains of tears, and then 
 dying away as a Voice dies, the most charac- 
 teristic thing about a man, leaving the might- 
 iest effects of any human thing ; but of itself 
 leaving nothing, not a trace, not an echo, dy- 
 ing absolutely, never to be recalled, by no 
 subtle chemistry, by no passionate yearning 
 of affection, ever to be re-awakened from the 
 air on which it has ceased to vibrate. 
 
 A Voice heralding the King. 
 
 And then at intervals came rumors of Him 
 so heralded. 
 
 Perplexing rumors again. Perplexing even 
 (we are told) to the Forerunner himself when, 
 in the darkness of his prison, only rumors 
 reached him of the outer world. 
 
 If " Art thou He who should come, or do
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 365 
 
 we look for Another ?" was wrung from that 
 faithful heart, what must have been the per- 
 plexity of those who looked for a kingdom 
 that was to come with much " observation," 
 and a King who would compel Tiberius Cse- 
 sar to lick the dust before him, who might 
 make a triumphal entry into Jerusalem with 
 kings holding his bridle reins, and a body- 
 guard of Jews of pure Hebrew blood, whom 
 he might " make princes in all lands ?" 
 
 The King's herald in the dungeons of He- 
 rod Antipas, and the King taking no heed ; 
 the loyal herald murdered in the prison, to 
 gratify the vengeance of a wicked princess, 
 and still the Mightier than all, whom that 
 faithful Voice had so loyally proclaimed, not 
 even threatening vengeance on the mur- 
 derer! 
 
 Content to declare the sufferer " the great- 
 est born of women." Yet steadfastly pro- 
 claiming that the kingdom was no longer 
 only " at hand," but already among them, that 
 the least "within it" were greater than this 
 greatest who had prepared it. 
 
 Then came fragments of parables, and of 
 sermons ; and benedictions on the poor, the 
 sorrowful, the patient, the persecuted, the 
 hungering and thirsty of this world ; difficult 
 elements out of which to found a kingdom 
 such as the Pharisees could conceive worthy
 
 366 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of the descendants of those who had fought 
 under the Maccabees. 
 
 To Esther, and any like her, gentle and be- 
 reaved, stricken with that sense of sin which 
 the old law could plough so terribly deep, 
 brought up in the hope of a higher Deliverer 
 from a deeper ruin, those words brought some 
 glimpses of their true meaning. But they 
 came to her only in broken strains, from out- 
 side. And of the inward interpretation to 
 who cared for them enough to become " dis- 
 ciples," nothing had yet reached Antioch. 
 
 Gladly would Onias have persuaded him- 
 self that the whole was a mere delusion of the 
 Galilean peasantry. 
 
 " Could any good thing come out of Naza- 
 reth ? " 
 
 " Had any of the rulers believed on Him ? " 
 
 " Out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." 
 
 The letter of the Sacred Books then, as al- 
 ways, could be forged into weapons against 
 the spirit by those from whom the spirit was 
 gone. 
 
 Esther could at any time be baffled in an 
 argument, by texts about Bethlehem, and the 
 princely line of David ; yet, irrefragable as 
 these textual arguments might seem, Onias 
 could not overcome the uneasiness which the 
 repeated reports of miracles caused him. 
 
 Thousands fed in the wilderness, the sick
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 367 
 
 of whole districts healed, even (it was said) 
 the dead raised ; it might be perilous alto- 
 gether to disregard signs like these ! 
 
 Yet these very miracles irritated him as 
 much as anything. 
 
 If such power was possessed, why not use 
 it to some practical purpose ? 
 
 If the towers of Herod Ahtipas's Golden 
 House in Tiberias had been levelled like the 
 walls of Jericho, and from the unroofed dun- 
 geons the Baptist had been set free ; if the 
 Roman eagles at Caesarea had been smitten 
 with lightning ; or, better still, the Roman 
 legions laid low like Sennacherib's army ; if 
 the Temple at Jerusalem had been illumined 
 with some great visible glory, or the sacrifices 
 consumed with fire from heaven ; this would, 
 indeed, have been something to compel atten- 
 tion ; this would have been a sign from 
 heaven. But these quiet, unostentatious little 
 acts of healing and feeding, why waste such 
 power as they seemed to indicate on work so 
 unimpressive ? At least, if multitudes could 
 be thus miraculously fed, instead of feeding 
 a few thousand hungry Galilean men and wo- 
 men on common bread and fish, why not have 
 entertained the whole nation gathered at one 
 of the national festivals at Jerusalem with 
 something like the fare of a king's table ? Or, 
 at the very least, why not exonerate the fish-
 
 368 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 erraan, His followers, from the necessity of 
 pursuing their humble craft, and prepare 
 them for being chiefs of the new kingdom by 
 releasing them from servile toil ? 
 
 If, indeed, the sick could be healed, let 
 them, at all events, be sick people of distinc- 
 tion. There was disease in palaces as well as 
 in poor men's homes. Let some great city 
 wailing round a dead prince, like Antioch 
 around the funeral pyre of Germanicus, or 
 Rome around the urn which bore his ashes, 
 be startled into joy and rapturous faith by 
 having its dead given back to it ; not merely 
 some poor, desolate Syrian home be made 
 glad for a few years by the restoring of a dead 
 son to a widowed mother. 
 
 But concerning this Esther was altogether 
 of another mind. She thought this pity for 
 the poor and unnoticed Divine ; Divine ! 
 which was more than kingly ; yet most truly 
 kingly, because Divine. These works were 
 like the Scriptures of their people, she said ; 
 like the angel appearing to show the well to 
 Hagar the slave; like the widow's cruse at 
 Sarepta, which was always only a cruse, yet 
 never failed. 
 
 To give splendidly to impress the people, 
 she said, was like the Herods, or any tyrant. 
 To give to the needy, because of the need, 
 was like God.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 369 
 
 She longed to go, to look and listen. 
 
 On this point, however, Onias was immov- 
 able. " The hearts of women were too easily 
 touched. There was evidently, from all ac- 
 counts, an inexplicable power about the pres- 
 ence of this Nazarene not rashly to be encoun- 
 tered." 
 
 " He Onias it could no longer be con- 
 cealed was a man of substance. It was, there- 
 fore, of some importance to any cause which 
 side he took with regard to it. Men of in- 
 fluence must act with caution. So much sub- 
 stance was not to be risked with levity." 
 
 " It might be of infinite importance to them- 
 selves which side they took !" Esther would 
 suggest on the other hand. " If he risked 
 money by taking one side, might they not be 
 risking themselves by taking none ?" 
 
 But Onias persisted in waiting for the " sign 
 from heaven." When such a sign as he could 
 not question came from such a visible heaven 
 as he recognized, it would be time to think of 
 launching such a heavily-freighted vessel as 
 his. Till then he would keep safe in the harbor. 
 
 It was into debates such as these that the 
 tidings came which Diodora brought from 
 Jerusalem, increasing considerably the per- 
 plexities of Onias, the double-minded, and as 
 greatly relieving those of Esther the single- 
 hearted.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 N the Roman maiden the Jewish 
 mother found, at last, a heart strick- 
 en out of this world's hopes, like her 
 own, thirsting for all her religion 
 could give ; thirsting, like herself, for all it 
 promised and could not give. 
 
 Little Hilda had owed all to Esther. The 
 deep sense of sin and want which the Jewish 
 rites and records could awaken, had vibrated 
 from her heart to the child's. But the vibra- 
 tions, though genuine, were faint ; such as 
 one string awakens in another, rather than as 
 from two instruments touched by the same 
 mighty hand. And now in Hilda's home, full 
 of hope and affection, and of the prattle of 
 little children, with the heart of her husband 
 trusting securely in her, the ideal of Hebrew 
 family life seemed fulfilled. The sense of sin 
 weighed lightly where the hand of Him who 
 forgives the penitent, but does not clear the 
 guilty, seemed to be shown in such manifest 
 (370)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 37! 
 
 tokens of His loving-kindness. And it might 
 be borne with, that the next life should seem 
 a little dim, when so wide and bright a space 
 lay between. 
 
 With Siguna, Esther well knew, that stead- 
 fast hope which never died in her heart of 
 meeting Olave once more, was dearer to her 
 than even to Hilda her rich fulfilments of 
 hope. She did not wish to think of a life 
 hereafter while she believed one world, one 
 life, still held her husband and herself. 
 
 To Siward also, from other causes, the 
 world looked wide and solid enough. If 
 Hilda was absorbed in its brightness, Siward 
 was equally absorbed by its wrongs. To the 
 great national Jewish Hope of a Deliverer, as 
 Esther interpreted it, he was always willing 
 to listen. The rumors from Galilee had 
 awakened, at intervals, a keen interest in his 
 mind. Those promises to the poor and the 
 wronged, those miracles of Dealing, seemed 
 to him just what the world wanted. Only he 
 watched to see whether the benediction and 
 the healing would extend further than Gali- 
 lee ; further than the Jewish nation, further 
 than the Roman Empire. 
 
 What he longed for was not so much for- 
 giveness of sin, as redress of wrongs ; not so 
 much " life and immortality brought to light," 
 as life made worth living here and now.
 
 372 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 With Clcelia Diodora it was different. 
 
 To her, as to Esther, the life beyond, or 
 rather the life within, had become the reality, 
 and all else the shadow ; too exclusively, no 
 doubt, a reality apart from all else, instead of 
 inspiring it. 
 
 What her Beloved had lost, she passionately 
 chose to contemn as no loss. She would not 
 believe that what was lavished recklessly on 
 the common crowds of men, or on brutes and 
 insects nay, even on men worse than brutes 
 and had been torn from that pure and beau- 
 tiful being, was worth anything. This world 
 was a shadow, a chaos ; this flesh a prison, a 
 tomb. At least so she said to herself. The 
 terrible uncertainty was whether, worthless 
 as it was, it might not yet be all. 
 
 For one clear, certain word from that un- 
 known shore, she would have dared, she had 
 dared, all the terrors and pains of the world 
 visible and invisible. 
 
 For this she searched the Jewish Scrip- 
 tures ; not calmly investigating them as a 
 magazine of countless treasures, but passion- 
 ately ransacking them as only one other heap 
 of crumbling dust for her unless she could 
 find this one lost jewel ; but if she found that, 
 the casket of the pearl which was worth the 
 world. 
 
 " To teach Greek to your sons," said some
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 373 
 
 of the severer Oriental rabbis, " was as pro- 
 fane as to keep swine. The Law should be 
 studied day and night. Greek should be 
 studied at that hour when it is neither day 
 nor night. Greek," they added, " was only 
 fit for women ;" a mere effeminate decoration, 
 like the crisp ing-pins, the glasses, and the 
 spangled ornaments. 
 
 Nevertheless half the nation probably spoke 
 Greek more familiarly than Hebrew, and 
 quoted their own Scriptures in the Alexan- 
 drian translation. It happened that in the 
 house of Onias, among the treasures left in 
 pledge, were copies of the greater portion of 
 the Septuagint. 
 
 To Cloelia Diodora, of the three prevailing 
 languages of the empire, Greek, through 
 Laon, was as familiar as Latin ; whilst to 
 Esther it was, from childhood, as well-known 
 as Hebrew or any of the Eastern dialects, her 
 mother having been of an Alexandrian Hel- 
 lenistic family. 
 
 Laon had solemnly promised Clcelia that, 
 if her desire continued, some one should take 
 her back through Galilee to Jerusalem early 
 that spring, to hear, if possible, that Voice for 
 herself. Meantime she spent all the time that 
 could be spared with Esther. Together they 
 searched those sacred books which have been 
 seed to the sower and bread to the eater of
 
 374 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 countless generations, Esther, with the de- 
 vout reverence of early faith quickened by a 
 new hope ; Diodora, with the passionate hun- 
 ger whose only plea is starvation but both 
 for bread. 
 
 Lovely touching stories of human homes 
 poetical delight in the beauty and sublimity 
 of this visible creation what were these then 
 to the Roman maiden ? The story of her life 
 had closed, with its one great love ; the beauty 
 of this visible world, now that the beautiful 
 eyes she loved had closed on it, jarred on her 
 like an instrument that can only play one tune 
 when the words have changed from a triumph 
 to a wail. 
 
 Yet, unconsciously, the beauty of the stories 
 and the lofty poetry of prophecy and psalm 
 did her good ; unconsciously, as fresh air and 
 beautiful nature do us good. They set her 
 heart in the open air. It was something for 
 her that that passionate search should be car- 
 ried on, as it were, by daylight on the moun- 
 tain-side, instead of in the dimness of some 
 chill oracular cavern. 
 
 " Tell me where my sister is ? Is she living ? 
 If she is living, how? where?" 
 
 And here and there hints of an answer came, 
 faint and far between, indeed, and broken by 
 long wails, yet still clearer than anything she 
 had heard before. Less like an echo of her
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 375 
 
 own voice. More like an answer from another 
 Voice, though distant as " beyond the limits 
 of the world," dimly heard as by ears wearied 
 with long straining to listen, and dimly under- 
 stood, as in some strange language, half-for- 
 gotten or half-learnt, and broken by ceaseless 
 echoes of the old wail from below. Yet, 
 through all the dimness and confusion of 
 voices, more like an answer from another 
 Voice. 
 
 "Going down," the "darkness," the "si- 
 lence, the pit, the chasm," whose steep sides 
 none could climb up to the light, " forgotten 
 as the dead ;" " life, a dream," the same " tale " 
 begun and ended to generation after genera- 
 tion ; and death, a " withering, a being over- 
 whelmed beneath irresistible waves, a being 
 consumed to ashes, a being crumbled to dust, 
 a cessation of work and hope, of speech to 
 one another, and of praise ,to God." Again 
 the hopeless old cry of the senses, bitter as in 
 any of the old utterances. 
 
 Yet ever and anon, through the long wail, 
 came faint echoing murmurs of that mighty 
 far-off music. They reached her not as some- 
 thing painfully wrought out from the depths 
 within, but as something quietly listened to 
 from above. 
 
 " Thy dead shall rise." 
 
 And in the later prophets,
 
 376 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " They that sleep in the dust shall wake." 
 
 And in the earlier words, which seemed to 
 her to reach further than any, 
 
 "As for me, I will behold Thy face in 
 righteousness." " I shall be satisfied, when I 
 awake, with thy likeness." 
 
 " Waking," being "satisfied" with the sight 
 of the face of God, being satisfied by being 
 made like Him. If this was what lay beyond 
 this brief and broken years, this was indeed 
 an immortality worth waiting for. 
 
 She sat one day pressing her fingers on the 
 precious words : the roll of manuscript lay 
 stretched across her knees in that little room 
 in Esther's house where the two women spent 
 so many hours together. It opened on a small 
 inner court. The Syrian sun flickered through 
 pomegranates and trellised vine-leaves, on the 
 floor of the alcove where their cushions were 
 spread. A runlet of cool water was trickling 
 into a little marble basin, and out of it through 
 a stone channel. 
 
 Still pressing her fingers on those words, as 
 if on the casket of a jewel, Diodora looked 
 up. Above the low roof of the house rose 
 the purple outline of distant hills. In the 
 light of those words she seemed herself to 
 awaken as if from a long, terrible dream, and 
 to see and hear the outside world once more. 
 
 "Esther, Esther!" she said. "Are they
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 377 
 
 awake now f satisfied now ? seeing that face 
 now? If they are, I am satisfied. To them 
 death is no wrong. The pain and loss are 
 only mine. And that I can bear." 
 
 Esther's eyes sank before the earnest ques- 
 tion in Diodora's. 
 
 " I know that they shall rise again, in the 
 resurrection, at the last day," she said, in a 
 tremulous voice. 
 
 " But now ? now ?" was the passionate re- 
 ply. " If they are robbed of anything like 
 life for anything like sleep, every hour that 
 they are asleep, silent, lost in the night, 
 every hour that she is asleep, my beautiful, 
 and good, and tender, and true, the delight oi 
 every eye that saw her, whilst I / am 
 awake, is a robbery and a wrong to her ; and 
 it is this I cannot bear." 
 
 Esther bowed her head, and tenderly sought 
 to silence the words of revolt, so terrible to 
 her, by pressing the lips that uttered them to 
 her own. 
 
 " Child ! child ! to awake even at last, to 
 wake once and for ever thus, is not that some- 
 thing? You forget God!" she added, in a 
 low voice. " That world, all worlds ; their 
 life, our life ; they we are His. The terri- 
 ble thing is not death not even death !" she 
 said firmly, in spite of the shudder that quiv- 
 ered through the frame of Diodora; "but
 
 378 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 sin. The glorious thing is not so much living 
 again living on , but living with God, being 
 good like Him ; not waking only, but waking 
 in His likeness to see His face." 
 
 Clcelia Diodora made no reply. The words 
 sank deep. 
 
 " It is not death that can hide His face 
 from us, but sin," Esther resumed, after a 
 long pause. " Of this I am sure. And to 
 sleep, even to sleep for ages, with His face 
 shining on our sleep, as a mother's on a sleep- 
 ing babe, would be something." 
 
 Closlia started suddenly, as if she had heard 
 a voice. 
 
 " The maid is not dead, but sleepeth" she mur- 
 mured. " Oh, Esther, I have been dreaming. 
 The Voice that said that, and woke the dead, 
 is still to be heard by the Galilean lake. Why 
 are we poring over old books? There is a 
 Voice to be heard ! a living Voice, such as 
 these old words were spoken by once ; and 
 yet, if all is true, not such not such as was 
 ever heard on earth before." 
 
 " Go," Esther said ; " and would to Heaven 
 I might be suffered to go with thee !" 
 
 But still Laon interposed delay. The very 
 mention of the wish seemed not now to irri- 
 tate, but to pain him. 
 
 " Child," he said at last, one evening, " I 
 have promised. If nothing can turn thee from
 
 TIC TORT OF THE VANQUISHED. 379 
 
 this superstitious longing, thou shalt go. But 
 I will never go myself with thee. I had well 
 nigh as soon carry thee to the Amphitheatre 
 to be devoured of the wild beasts. Siguna 
 may go with thee, and Siward. Since my 
 voice has lost all power for thee, what service 
 could I render by accompanying thee ? " 
 
 " Come, Laon, dearer, better to me always 
 than all but one ! " she said, laying his hand 
 on her head, as she sat at his feet. " Hast 
 thou no yearning for more certain words? 
 Come thou thyself r and hear and see." 
 
 " I am content to live as I have lived," he 
 said ; " to die as Socrates died, if I may. I 
 am too old to hunt the world for new voices." 
 
 "Would thy Socrates have been content?" 
 she ventured to ask. "Would he not have 
 gladly left the cavern and the shadows of the 
 outside fire, for the sunlight and the reali- 
 ties?" she added, quoting a part of the Re- 
 public they had often read together. " O 
 Laon," she concluded, with an appealing clasp 
 of her hands, " if they are only words like 
 any other words, how can they harm thee? 
 Wilt thou not know them, and guard me, thy 
 child ? Come and see. Come and take care 
 of me." 
 
 He seemed touched, and a little comforted. 
 
 " My poor old arm and my thin old voice 
 could do little for thee," he said. " Siguna
 
 380 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 shall cherish thee ; and Siward has a stout 
 arm to defend thee. I will stay at home, and 
 work for you all. And if," he added, after a 
 pause, " there could be anything in the words 
 you seek to hear, they will not come weak- 
 ened to me, child, through thy voice." 
 
 So at last Laon suffered the preparations for 
 the journey to Galilee to begin ; and the day 
 of departure was fixed a fortnight thence. 
 
 Slowly the final days of expectation passed 
 for Diodora. The nearer the fulfilment of her 
 longing drew, the more she felt what it might 
 be to her. All the more because those words 
 of Esther had ploughed a deep furrow in her 
 heart : " It is not the death that hides God's 
 face from us, but sin." Again and^again she 
 searched those Sacred Books ; not now only 
 to find out what they said of immortality, but 
 what they meant by God and by sin. And 
 with this new object in her search, she felt 
 like some one who has suddenly found the 
 magic word, the master-key, which opens 
 door after door in some vast palace, and cas- 
 ket after casket in some inexhaustible treasury. 
 To these words every barrier of those Sacred 
 Books sprang open ; God, and sin. 
 
 This master-key which opened the Scrip- 
 tures, opened also one chamber after another 
 in the world and in her own life. At last the 
 struggles in her heart were named by such
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 381 
 
 names as could only be given by One who un- 
 derstood : " It is not death that hides His face 
 from us, but sin." 
 
 She recalled the bitter dread which she had 
 felt even in the solitude of the Pomasrium 
 that even that abyss into which she had sunk 
 might be but the brink of a deeper possible 
 abyss : the dread of growing wicked, cruel, 
 malignant, like a cruel phantom of the night, 
 in this endless, hopeless night. 
 
 She remembered how, after seeing the sor- 
 ceress, the feeling had possessed her that there 
 might be something which could separate her 
 from her Beloved further even than death ; 
 how she had felt that nothing which made her 
 unlike that pure and loving being could bring 
 them nearer ; and she remembered, too, how, 
 in that choice rather not to know than to do 
 evil, the first feeling of rest had come on her 
 since her sorrow. 
 
 And now, in the light of those wonderful 
 old Books, these dim yearnings and struggles 
 took shape and meaning. What was mystical 
 in them, what was literal what was the up- 
 ward panting of the Divine breath in man, 
 made in the Divine Image what the fresh in- 
 breathing of the Divine Spirit into some one 
 illuminated man did not perplex her. Every- 
 where throughout those marvellous pages she 
 felt the throb of her own heart, its aching and
 
 382 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 its panting thirst ; everywhere she felt the 
 warmth of Another Heart, strong and free, 
 able to pity, able to satisfy. 
 
 The world created, not organized out of 
 some eternal substance, probably evil, yet in- 
 destructible, but created, then brooded over, 
 shaped, delighted in. Created good : not 
 heaven only, and its pure fires ; but earth, 
 with its living creatures. Once good alto- 
 gether, and delighted in. 
 
 Man, again, created not in the image of 
 any living creature, but of the Creator ; 
 created, not growing out of Nature ; created, 
 yet formed of dust linked to the Divine, and 
 yet to this lowliest dust of the world. Man 
 and woman created, to help, and love, and 
 complete each other ; not to rival or to t}^ran- 
 nize over each other. 
 
 Man created able to speak to God ; God 
 speaking to man. 
 
 Then the discord. 
 
 Man choosing to be as gods, instead of to 
 be like God, and with God ; and losing God 
 and the likeness to Him together; choosing 
 to be the centre of the universe, and by that 
 choice becoming a mere atom in the midst of 
 a chaos ; falling and dying inwardly with the 
 loss of God. Love changing into selfish pas- 
 sion ; aspiration into ambition. 
 
 Still, God seeking, speaking ; pronouncing
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 383 
 
 the sentence, yet promising, recalling ; clos- 
 ing the spoiled Paradise, yet opening a Tab- 
 ernacle in the wilderness, a Temple and Holy 
 Place among the thorns and thistles. The 
 chasm between the sinful creature and the 
 Holy One recognized, guarded ; hollowed 
 deeper and deeper through the centuries, by 
 man's sin, by deeper re vealings of the Divine 
 holiness ; yet always, on the other side of that 
 chasm, infinite pity. 
 
 A sacrifice required of man : sacrifice per- 
 petual, sacrifice of the very costliest and 
 dearest ; yet awful irony cast on whole heca- 
 tombs of heartless offerings. Only the heart 
 only justice, mercy, and walking humbly 
 with God demanded. Only the heart ; 
 which is, absolutely the whole man. 
 
 Conscience after conscience smitten with 
 agony of repentance, heart after heart touched 
 with longing affection ; yet through all the 
 agonies a dim trust in Divine forgiveness 
 through all the adoring love, dim, half-dumb 
 meanings of distance and separation. 
 
 And through all the darkness, distance, 
 separation, always the music of a far-off hope, 
 growing ever nearer and clearer : the hope of 
 a Conquerer to be born of that poor, fallen 
 Eve of a Son of Abraham, in whom the 
 world was to be blessed of a King, a Shep- 
 herd, a Priest, a Deliverer. A Deliverer from
 
 384 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 wrong, from oppression, from sin, from this 
 chasm which rent the world from God : the 
 Sent of God the Son of man. 
 
 So the two women the Roman and the 
 Jewess searched, and listened, and longed, 
 and wondered, and learned. And all their 
 listening and learning were living with the 
 breath of prayer and the pulse of new hope 
 the hope of hearing that Voice in Galilee. For 
 dimly Diodora began to feel that whatever 
 could bridge that chasm between man and 
 God whatever could resolve the discord of 
 sin might bridge all chasms and all separa- 
 tions, and bring all discords to music. In 
 finding one who could forgive and cleanse her 
 sin, she would find One who could conquer 
 death. Since not death separates us from 
 God, but sin, not death, she began to feel, but 
 only sin, can really separate us from our be- 
 loved. The long furrow which through the 
 centuries the history of the Jewish race had 
 been ploughing for the seed of the Sower, 
 the Son of man, was being traced in her 
 heart. 
 
 So that fortnight passed in the early spring 
 at Antioch, until the day came when the Ger- 
 man mother and son and the Roman maiden 
 were to return to Galilee.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 HE spring-time had come to those 
 wooded hills of Antioch, green all 
 the year round with the glossy 
 leaves of ilex, bay, and myrtle, 
 bringing even to the well-watered Paradises 
 of Epidaphne a new freshness on tree and 
 grass, and among the grasses a glorious 
 wealth of color in the countless tints of count- 
 less flowers. 
 
 Every tree must flower in its own climate ; 
 and at Antioch everything seemed to be in 
 its own climate. Every fragrant thicket be- 
 came a home of birds. Everywhere fell soft 
 cooings of doves, or bubbled up joyous foun- 
 tains of song ; all the hill-sides broke into a 
 flood of blossom and of music ; and every- 
 where among that forest of blossom prattled 
 and played the children, and the little brooks 
 the children of the mountains. 
 
 Every day Hilda's fair children found some 
 new treasure poured out for them on the lap 
 17 (385)
 
 3 86 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of the beautiful new world. The earth seem- 
 ed to the children kind and smiling, like their 
 own fair young mother ; and they nestled 
 among the flowers, and hid among the thick- 
 ets, and folded themselves in all the joy and 
 beauty, as in their mother's robe. 
 
 And as Callias, the young sculptor, watched 
 and guarded them, a whole spring-tide of de- 
 light and beauty seemed to blossom also with- 
 in him ; and an immortality of youth seemed 
 necessary, if only to shape into perfection the 
 germs of that world of lovely visions ; nay, 
 more, an immortality seemed promised, seem- 
 ed actually infolded in such an undeveloped 
 inner wealth of art, as-the creation is infolded 
 in the chaos. 
 
 To old Laon also the spring brought its 
 gladness. A pulse of life seemed to throb 
 even through the glorious old world in which 
 he lived. The heroes and wise men of old 
 seemed no more merely the forerunners, but 
 the fathers of the world. The present seemed 
 once more not the old age of the past, but its 
 child. And in this fresh green world, among 
 these forests and rivers, vigorous and beauti- 
 ful as any Homer or Plato had ever seen, it 
 seemed not so impossible that voices as true 
 and sweet might yet be heard, that lives as 
 high and true and joyous as those of old might 
 yet be lived.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 387 
 
 Only to Onias the spring brought nothing 
 new. He indeed dwelt in the under-world, 
 the caverns of the gnomes and metal-workers, 
 roofed in from the sunlight by domes of silver 
 and gold, and lighted only by the smelting 
 furnaces where the precious ores are fused. 
 No breath of spring penetrated there. The 
 very purpose of the dwellers was to secure 
 those dwellings from change ; to roof in their 
 world from God, from His storms, His rust- 
 ing rains and winds, from the perilous trans- 
 mutations of His light ; unconscious that they 
 could only secure their world from change by 
 sealing it against life. 
 
 Into this under-world, with its heaps of 
 treasure and its vain bolts of carefulness, no 
 living breath reached from the earth outside, 
 or from the spring-tide of the Better Hope. 
 Blossoms had no appreciable value there un- 
 less they could be crushed and distilled into 
 changeless oils of perfume ; nor fruits until 
 they were dried and preserved beyond pos- 
 sibility of decay, or of reproduction. 
 
 Spiritual truth, likewise, could only be ad- 
 mitted there with the perilous life crushed 
 out of it, dried into the immutable letter, war- 
 ranted to keep for centuries without diminu- 
 tion or growth (if sealed from the air and 
 light). 
 
 But to Esther and Clcelia Diodora, and in
 
 3 88 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 a measure to Siward, that spring brought 
 anew a hope to which all the wealth of new 
 life flooding the hills and plains around Anti- 
 och seemed but as a little sea-side pool left 
 high among the rocks, witnessing that beyond 
 is the Great Sea of life, promising that at the 
 next tide the Great Sea will be sweeping, 
 surging, boundless, fathomless there. 
 
 In Siward's heart, moreover, there was an 
 especial high-tide of joy that year. For the 
 first spring since he was a boy, he was free. 
 
 The petty fretting of the daily bondage was 
 off him ; and before him and his frowned no 
 longer the terrible possibilities involved in 
 Roman slavery. 
 
 The chain was around him and his no more, 
 and before him rose no more the shame and 
 the slow anguish of the Cross. 
 
 So, exchanging few words, but full of many 
 hopes, the German mother and son, and the 
 Roman patrician maiden, went their way 
 southward from Antioch towards Galilee. 
 
 Everywhere, the vineyards on the terraced 
 slopes, the corn-fields in the valleys and plains, 
 the forests on the heights, were green with 
 the new life of spring. In the fragrant forest 
 glades of Galilee the hoofs of the asses which 
 the women rode swept through thick beds of 
 flowers, scarlet and purple and golden. 
 
 And as they approached the shores of Tibe- 

 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 389 
 
 rias, in every village street, and among every 
 band of laborers among which they passed, 
 the pulse of the new Hope for the world was 
 throbbing. Multitudes were looking for a 
 Deliverer from the yoke of Rome ; perhaps 
 were wondering when He who could feed the 
 thousands, and break the chain of the demo- 
 niac, and calm the raging of the sea, would at 
 last suffer Himself to be proclaimed King. 
 In every village were some who had felt the 
 touch of those healing hands, or heard the 
 tones of that liberating voice, freeing their 
 beloved from hopeless disease, and themselves 
 from sorrow worse than death. 
 
 On every hill-side the tones of that Voice 
 had sounded ; and fragments of the life-giving 
 words must have been floating in every home. 
 
 To Siward the Hope was for the world. 
 He looked for One to redress wrongs. With 
 Siguna the thought that lightened many a 
 weary mile was, that she might possibly see 
 those mighty hands laid gently on the bowed 
 and crippled form beside her, and have the 
 joy of beholding the Roman maiden, no more 
 disguised in misshapen flesh, rise strong and 
 free, and seem the good and brave and beau- 
 tiful being Siguna felt she was. 
 
 To Clcelia Diodora no hope of bodily deliv- 
 erance had ever come. As her sister had 
 loved her, she was content to be. In this
 
 390 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 world or the next no ideal of life had ever 
 crossed her mind, save to creep, adoring and 
 satisfied, close beside her Beloved, her Beau- 
 tiful, unnoticed and unknown, serving her, 
 while she served the world. 
 
 And now one hope alone inspired her, the 
 hope of finding some tidings of her dead from 
 One who knew, merging into that deeper 
 hope of being delivered from that which is 
 the death in death the separation not of body 
 only, but of spirit that terrible inward death 
 of sin ; the hope, dim indeed and fluctuating, 
 but real, not only of a Conqueror of Death, 
 but of a Redeemer from sin. 
 
 To each of them, as they pressed southward 
 along the shingly beaches of the lake, by its 
 fishing villages, its rocky way-sides, its grassy 
 slopes, its springing corn-fields, came broken 
 fragments of speech, flying reports of acts, 
 such as fed the separate hope of each. 
 
 To Siward came rumors of the King, who 
 never denied that He was the King, yet would 
 not suffer Himself to be proclaimed ; wonder- 
 ing surmises whether even now in Jerusalem 
 He who had broken the yoke of the demoniac 
 and stilled the raging of the storm, might not. 
 at the Feast, at last be suffering Himself to be 
 recognized for what He was to be hailed 
 with bowed knee, crowned and sceptred King 
 of the Jews, sitting above the water-floods of
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 391 
 
 the nations, a King for ever; burning frag- 
 ments of the denunciations which had scorch- 
 ed the disguises from the avaricious and the 
 hypocrite, of the blessings on the poor, and 
 the proclamations of liberty to the captive. 
 
 To the German mother came tender histo- 
 ries of little children folded to the heart of the 
 Son of man, blessed by the touch of His hands 
 and the words from His lips ; of fainting mul- 
 titudes fed, of blind eyes opened, and deaf 
 ears unstopped ; of palsied and crippled limbs 
 made strong and free. 
 
 To the mourner came faint echoes of a bit- 
 terer bondage broken, of a deeper hunger sat- 
 isfied, and more incurable diseases healed ; of 
 mightier words, and more glorious wonders, 
 and fuller benedictions; of the dead raised, 
 and, greater marvel still, the broken-hearted 
 healed. 
 
 And so, with hearts throbbing with ever 
 stronger pulsations of that great Hope, they 
 pressed up the hills from the fertile hollows 
 of the lake of Galilee, on and on towards the 
 city where that Voice was said to be teaching 
 and those Hands were believed to be healing 
 still ; towards Jerusalem, if haply they might 
 catch some faint tones of the mighty words, 
 or but touch the hem of the garment, or gather 
 up some scattered crumbs of the benedictions, 
 or even catch the gleam of the lightnings of
 
 392 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 the eyes which saw through all disguises to 
 the sin, yet pierced to the sin only to consume 
 it, and save the sinner ; if haply, at last, His 
 hour being come, they might even echo back 
 the Hosannas in which His people proclaimed 
 Him King, content for ever to be hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water in the kingdom 
 of Him who came to undo the heavy burdens 
 and let the oppressed go free. 
 
 Until, at last, on one quiet hill-side, the last 
 before they would have reached Olivet, they 
 met a little downcast company of Galileans, 
 and heard that He who they trusted should 
 have redeemed Israel who had fed the thou- 
 sands, stilled the storm, raised the dead had 
 at length been seized by the Sanhedrim, con- 
 demned by the Romans, nailed to the shame- 
 ful Cross between two notorious criminals, 
 and there, after six hours of torture, had died. 
 Unresisting, uncomplaining, and unavenged, 
 He had died, and had been buried.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 LOWLY the three retraced their 
 steps to Antioch. The beauty of 
 the spring was still in all its fresh- 
 ness on the green hills and corn- 
 fields, the orchards, and fragrant gardens of 
 those smiling Galilean shores, which seemed 
 to those who looked on them then as " the 
 Paradise of God." 
 
 The little waves of the lake rippled with a 
 low cool music on the sandy beach, or among 
 the roots of the oleanders. The sails of the 
 fishing-boats speckled the blue waters; the 
 little fleets returned each to its own rocky 
 promontory or mimic harbor, to be welcomed, 
 with their haul of fish, in town or village, by 
 mothers and children. Along the plain of 
 Gennesaret' the sower went forth to sow, fol- 
 lowed along the stony way-side by the hungry 
 flocks of birds ; far up on the slopes of the 
 higher hills the shepherds might be seen lead- 
 ing their mingled flocks the white sheep 
 17* (393)
 
 394 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 clustered near, them, the nimble black goats 
 scattered hither and thither among the steep 
 rocks. In the village streets the carpenter 
 was busy with his plane, the women sat with- 
 in the shade grinding at the mill-stone, or 
 again mixing the leaven in the bread now 
 that the Passover was over. 
 
 All went on as in any other spring. The 
 ceaseless Parables were being lived and acted 
 over and over, as on those three former 
 springs when the eyes of One not of this 
 world had read them, and had shown how 
 what to earthly eyes seemed but pictures or 
 idle traceries, were indeed hieroglyphics, sa- 
 cred signs of a priestly language, never more 
 to be forgotten or lost to men. 
 
 But to some hearts on these shores the life 
 and the meaning must have passed out of all 
 the world with those tidings from Jerusalem. 
 
 The sick might be laid at the doors to feel 
 the breath of spring ; but nevermore to the 
 end of time would they feel the touch which 
 " healed them all." The death-wail might re- 
 sound along the streets ; nevermore to the 
 end of time, in cottage or palace, would it be 
 hushed, and changed into the song of joy. The 
 storms might wear themselves out on the tor- 
 mented waters, and on the shattered and sink- 
 ing ships ; nevermore to the end of time would 
 the quiet words of the voice which said, " It
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 395 
 
 is I : be not afraid," calm the trembling hearts 
 of men, and the very winds themselves. 
 
 But to those who loved Him, and had 
 learned something not only of what He could 
 do, but of what He was who had loved Him 
 enough to know Him, and had known Him 
 enough to worship Him what must have the 
 land become where He had taught for threfl 
 years, and would never teach again ? What 
 must the world have seemed, where it was 
 possible for Him to be sentenced as a male- 
 factor, and executed as the basest criminal or 
 
 slave ? 
 
 * * * ** * 
 
 To Siward all the darkest fears of his old 
 Northern traditional beliefs came back. The 
 whole world seemed indeed to have become 
 the dominion of the evil powers. The pow- 
 ers of life and light (which always, as he had 
 thought in childhood, held a warfare of fear- 
 ful peril and uncertainty with the powers of 
 death and darkness, and had more than once 
 been vanquished and vanquished in the best 
 and most beloved by blind force or cruel 
 stratagem) were most surely vanquished now. 
 
 The terrible tidings did not exactly sur- 
 prise him. It was like so much that he had 
 feared, indeed, or had seen. It was only the 
 returning in the darker shape of the fear and 
 doubt that had hung over all his life ; only
 
 396 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 the quenching of the brightest hope he had 
 ever ventured to receive, as other hopes had 
 been quenched before. 
 
 It was no new thing for nations not to rec- 
 ognize or to reject those who would have 
 saved them. The Germans had murdered 
 Herman. The Greeks, Laon said, had poi- 
 soned Socrates. The Romans had suffered 
 Germanicus to be slowly poisoned, and went 
 on worshiping Tiberius, who was believed to 
 have been the instigator of the murder. 
 
 It was no new thing for the purest to suffer 
 and for the best to die. Only, in such a world, 
 for such a race, what place was there for hope ? 
 What a delusion all his visions of the libera- 
 tion of his people had been ! What chance 
 was there of his doing anything, when power 
 and wisdom and goodness that seemed more 
 than human had failed ? What certainty was 
 there that, if he or any succeeded in winning 
 freedom for the Germans, freedom would for 
 them be anything better than freedom to as- 
 sassinate some other Herman, and to worship 
 some other Tiberius ; to live, as Laon had 
 said, more utterly like the beasts of the forest, 
 with nothing to inspire them but blind hun- 
 ger, and nothing to restrain them but blind 
 terror and brute force ? 
 
 He spoke little ; he was as watchful a guar- 
 dian as ever over his mother and Diodora ;
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 397 
 
 but all the light had gone from his face. Hope 
 for humanity had died for him in that death. 
 
 Everywhere, as he saw, not as of old only 
 before himself, the captive and the slave, but 
 before all the bravest and best, as the goal of 
 the highest aims of all men, as the best reward 
 the nation had for the patriot, the race for its 
 benefactors black against the mid-day sky, 
 the Cross, 
 
 Henceforth there was nothing but to en- 
 dure ; to endure, because it was better to 
 suffer than to be cruel ; to endure, because 
 there was no hope of cure ; to endure, be- 
 cause there was no limit to the amount of en- 
 durance that might be required : to trample 
 out any fond spark of hope, to refuse any soft 
 attraction of pleasure, to despise honor, to 
 cling as slightly as possible to any clasp of 
 affection, lest any of these things should if 
 possible still further embitter the cup of an- 
 guish and shame and utter abandonment, 
 when the hands used in the service of men 
 were stretched helpless on the slave's last 
 rack of torture, and there was no hiding of 
 the quivering face from the mockery of satis- 
 fied malignity, or the cold criticism of disap- 
 pointed expectation. 
 
 Since the Cross was the reward of the 
 world's benefactors, the only refuge for men
 
 398 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED 
 
 who would not be wicked "was stoicism, with- 
 out relaxation and without hope, here or here- 
 after ; without hope for men or for man, or in 
 God. For what, after all, could the Deity do 
 more than endure, with a longer patience, 
 evil as inevitable to God as to man ? 
 
 With Siguna the hope had been more limi- 
 ted, and the grief was simpler. For the poor 
 crippled maiden there could now be no de- 
 liverance. She must bear her burden to the 
 end. Her disappointment showed itself chiefly 
 in a tenderer care for Diodora. Since hope 
 was slain, she must as far as might be make 
 it up by love. 
 
 But, to her amazement, Diodora scarcely 
 seemed to grieve. She who had longed most 
 and hoped most for but one tone of that 
 Voice, now that it was silent for ever, scarcely 
 seemed cast down. 
 
 Tears indeed were often falling on her face, 
 when Siguna glanced at her ; unusual tears, 
 with her whose sorrow had been too irreme- 
 diable to find much relief in weeping ; whose 
 tears, when they came, had come in a passion- 
 ate storm of indignation against the wrong 
 done her sister, or in a few bitter drops, like 
 drops of blood wrung from her heart. 
 
 But now her tears fell softly ; and mean- 
 time on the poor worn face there was a look
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 399 
 
 of tender content, at times glowing into joy, 
 and even into triumph. 
 
 For a long time she said nothing, and the 
 German mother did not dare to question. At 
 length one evening, as the two women sat 
 resting on a quiet beach by the lake of Gali- 
 lee, and the little waves were rippling at their 
 feet, and the stars were shining in the clear 
 sky with the boundless depths of night and 
 the countless perspective of stars behind them, 
 and shining again in the still waters, quietly 
 she took Siguna's hand and laid it on her 
 cheek. 
 
 " I am content !" she said. " Content, since 
 He belongs no more to this visible world, but 
 to that, to them, to the heavens. It can be 
 no loss, no wrong to die, since He has died ; 
 has died and has been buried."
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 N the little company at Antioch the 
 tidings brought by the three way- 
 farers from Palestine fell with very 
 different effect. 
 Hilda, the happy wife and mother, wept 
 bitterly when she heard it. All her tender, 
 joyous heart was moved, as at the saddest 
 history she had ever been told. Yet it fell 
 outside her own little space of life and sun- 
 shine. It made the outside world indeed 
 seem colder and darker than ever, and lent a 
 passionate force to the clinging to her hus- 
 band and children, showing in what a peril- 
 ous and ungrateful world her sweet garden 
 of home was set. She parted from Callias 
 with more tremulous anxiety, and welcomed 
 him back with a more tumultuous gladness 
 as if any return from a world. so merciless 
 were like a rescue. She wrapped her children 
 closer and warmer than ever in her love from 
 the terrible cold and darkness around. 
 (400)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 401 
 
 To Callias it gave but a deeper shattering 
 to the chaos of uncertainty in which all things, 
 seen and unseen, national, moral and spiritual, 
 seemed to him for ever fluctuating ; all things 
 save that little island of purity and affection 
 which Hilda kept for him in his home. 
 
 Siguna grieved, indeed, and lamented over 
 this fearful crime and wrong. But the world 
 was full of crime, and woe, and wrong. That 
 very year Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, 
 worn out at last by exile and persecution, and 
 by the wrongs of her sons, had refused to take 
 food, and had died of starvation at Pandataria. 
 Tiberius, amidst the luxuriant beauty of his 
 twelve villas at Caprese, was congratulating 
 himself that she had saved him the inconveni- 
 ence of another murder by starving herself to 
 death. And still the paradises of Capreae 
 bloomed on unsmitten by any audible curse. 
 
 In Laon, on the other hand, for the first 
 time a real interest was enkindled in the In- 
 nocent Sufferer. Whilst the reports of the 
 wise and holy words had continued to echo 
 to them from Galilee, he had occupied him- 
 self in showing that they were not altogether 
 new, or not altogether true. But now he ac- 
 knowledged that there was something admir- 
 able in the life, and that the death crowned it. 
 It was another martyrdom for truth. The 
 Jews, like the Athenians, had rejected their
 
 402 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 best and wisest. It was but natural. Socrates 
 and Plato had as it were foreseen it. The 
 Jews, deeming their Just One unjust, had suf- 
 fered Him to be " tortured, fettered, and even 
 crucified." 
 
 And thenceforth he listened to such frag- 
 ments as reached him of the gracious words 
 without endeavoring to prove that they were 
 valueless, or that some one else had said just 
 the same before. 
 
 To Onias the tidings brought some pain, yet 
 more relief. 
 
 At length the Sanhedrim and the Romans 
 and therefore, it was to be supposed, Provi- 
 dence, the Unnameable had settled the doubt 
 which had perplexed him. He confessed he 
 should scarcely have seen his way to such a 
 sentence. But herein lay the comfort of hav- 
 ing scribes to interpret and governors to de- 
 cide for you. The responsibility fell on them. 
 He was thankful he had not been in Jerusa- 
 lem, or even in Galilee, at the time. Many of 
 the signs and wonders had seemed over- 
 whelming. The teaching (with the exception, 
 perhaps, of the vehement denunciations of the 
 scribes and Pharisees) had seemed worthy of 
 the prophets. And, he confessed, many of the 
 ancient prophecies had seemed to be strangely 
 fulfilled ; which was, of course, only another 
 proof of the peril of unlearned interpretations
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 403 
 
 of prophec} 7 . The scribes and Pharisees had 
 evidently understood the question from the 
 beginning, as was to be expected of scribes 
 and Pharisees. And the Romans had finally 
 and for ever, however roughly, ended the con- 
 troversy. He wondered a little that the San- 
 hedrim had consented to concede so much to 
 the Roman governor. The doom of a Roman 
 slave was scarcely one which should have 
 been suffered to fall on any freeborn Jew. 
 But no doubt the rulers estimated the peril 
 better than he could. The whole nation, 
 they probably saw, was in danger of being 
 led astray. No doubt the Sanhedrim had act- 
 ed for the best. If it had been of God, it was 
 plain it could never have come to such an end. 
 Failure was the best cure for delusion. And 
 a delusion so popular, perhaps, required a re- 
 futation such as all the people could not fail 
 to understand. Nevertheless, he confessed, 
 he did feel thankful that Providence had cast 
 his lot at Antioch, and not at Jerusalem, dur- 
 ing the trial. It was a comfort not to have 
 had to decide. 
 
 On Esther and on Siward the gloom fell 
 deepest. To Siward it was an extinction of 
 hope in man and God. 
 
 To Esther it was an extinction of hope for 
 Israel. If not the Messiah, she felt sure that 
 He who had thus suffered at Jerusalem was
 
 404 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 one who had loved Israel, had loved God, and 
 had loved men as none had ever done before. 
 
 Before the Romans no accusation could be 
 brought against Him, but that He had 'said 
 He was King of the Jews. Before the San- 
 hedrim no fault could be alleged, but that He 
 said, I am the Son of God. 
 
 If neither of these were true the royal 
 claims, or the divine yet the wonders of 
 healing were true ; the years of patient min- 
 istering to every want of the needy, of holy 
 teaching which none could gainsay. No king 
 of Israel would ever come endowed with 
 more wisdom, and power, and patriotism. 
 No son of man could ever come again if all 
 she heard was true with more likeness to 
 God, " long-suffering, full of compassion, for- 
 giving sin, yet by no means clearing the 
 guilty." If, on the other hand, both of these 
 assertions for which they had put him to 
 death were true, what would be the fate of 
 Israel then ? 
 
 All her woman's heart and all her Hebrew 
 patriotism were stirred to the depths. 
 
 In an agony of pity she would moan and 
 sob for hours. Among the thousands those 
 hands had touched, healing and blessing, 
 were there none to succour or to save ? 
 
 And then the pity would be frozen back by 
 a horror of apprehension.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 405 
 
 What if, as of old, her people had rejected 
 their prophets ; if, as they had scornfully re- 
 fused Moses, and thrown Jeremiah into the 
 dungeon ; if, as when the Table of the Law 
 was being written by the finger of God on the 
 Mount, under the very echo of the thunder 
 and the shadow of the cloud that hid the 
 lightnings, they had danced round the calf; 
 if, as when the beautiful Temple was illumin- 
 ed by the Divine glory, and the sacrifices con- 
 sumed by the heavenly fires on the opposite 
 height of Olivet, they had worshiped the 
 images of base and cruel idols ; what if, as 
 they had resisted God so long, now at last 
 they had rejected the Best and the Last, and, 
 in very sight of the redemption of the Re- 
 deemer, had turned aside to the bondage at 
 once of their own sins and of the Roman 
 yoke ! 
 
 Day and night the vision of that great 
 crime haunted her as if on her hands also the 
 ineffaceable blood-stain rested. She made no 
 outward show of woe. Of what avail were 
 sackcloth and ashes ? 
 
 If Israel had delivered her Deliverer to 
 Roman mockery and torture, what could re- 
 main but a fearful vengeance ; another Red 
 Sea, with no pillar of fire, and no Divine Hand 
 to cleave a path through its overwhelming 
 waves another Sinai, with no supplicating
 
 406 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Moses to intercede and shield from its just 
 lightnings. 
 
 But from Clcelia Diodora the solemn peace 
 that had come, as they journeyed through 
 Galilee, did not pass away. 
 
 She was on the side, not of the Jews or 
 of the Romans, but of the Sufferer, of the 
 Dead. 
 
 This world had slain its Best. Israel had 
 rejected her King. Was it so wonderful, or 
 so unendurable ? 
 
 So much as this poor, blind, visible world 
 had lost, so much the Hades, the unseen had 
 secured. 
 
 Thither had passed all that wisdom and 
 power and goodness. 
 
 To be as He was, could be no wrong to her 
 beloved. To be where He was must be joy 
 and how unutterable ! If her beloved could 
 indeed hear that Voice and see that Face she 
 would glady have died to hear and see, she 
 was content. One day she would also die; 
 she also would hear and see. Meantime she 
 could wait, content, if only the waiting and 
 the dimness were for her and not for her be- 
 loved content if the loss and wrong were 
 only hers content indeed with the brief 
 waiting and the being satisfied for ever. 
 
 Content ! nay, in a rapture of expectation, 
 even now and always, if only she could be
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 407 
 
 certain, as He they had crucified had been 
 certain, of the goodness of God. 
 
 The probability on which Socrates had 
 been content to launch forth into the un- 
 known, had seemed to her, of old, strong 
 enough to die on. 
 
 The hope that life so yielded up inspired, 
 seemed strong enough to trust her beloved 
 to, which was infinitely more. 
 
 One or two rumors of that day on Calvary, 
 brief and broken, floated to her, which made 
 her hope all but a certainty. 
 
 There was a report of a strange darkness at 
 noon, and of an earthquake, and a convulsion 
 of the rocks. This might very probably have 
 been, she thought, but this was not what 
 moved her. To her it mattered little. 
 
 The sun which could light the murderers 
 to such a deed, and the earth which could 
 suffer such a burden to be laid on her as that 
 Cross, might well bear anything. He had 
 passed beyond their apathy, or their sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 But two reported sayings rested on her heart. 
 
 It was said that a Roman centurion who 
 had seen Him die, had broken through his 
 Roman apathy and his soldierly silence, and 
 had exclaimed that He was the Son of God. 
 
 Such majesty, such divinity had shone 
 through that shame and torture !
 
 4 o8 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 And it was said that the last words He had 
 uttered on that rack of anguish were no com- 
 plaint, no menace, no cry of agonized entreaty, 
 but calm 'and clear, 
 
 " Father, into Thy hands I commend My 
 spirit." 
 
 If this were true, then all she hoped and 
 longed for was true. And it must be true. 
 For who, in all the world, among the Romans, 
 had ever heard such dying words? Would 
 His enemies among the Jews have invented 
 them ? Or, if His friends had dared imagine 
 words to put into His dying lips, would they 
 have abstained from one tone of menace on 
 the murderers one hint of majesty to be 
 avenged ? 
 
 Those words were true. She was sure of 
 this. Then, if they were true, all the best she 
 cared to hope for was true ; better than all she 
 had dared to desire was true. 
 
 To die is to go home. 
 
 When, as Plato thought, the spirit is liberat- 
 ed by death from its prison when, as the Jew- 
 ish Catacombs pictured, as an uncaged dove 
 it soars forth into the free air it soars not be- 
 wildered into the infinite heavens. Hands 
 receive it, strong and gentle. The hands of 
 the Father. 
 
 The unseen world is the kingdom, the world 
 of God. God is the Father.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 409 
 
 Let this world then be what it may. It 
 matters not. Let this whole life be a slumber, 
 a dream, or a weary waiting, the whole world 
 a shadow. There the spirits of the just are at 
 home ; now, at once, for ever ; at home with 
 the Father. There they are living now, not 
 waiting to be revivified, but living ; awake 
 now, not fettered in slumbers, however calm ; 
 not waiting to be awakened after a silence 
 and blank of centuries, but awake as those 
 whom infinite love has welcomed to infinite 
 joy. 
 
 Living, awake, at home, satisfied, like God, 
 like what they were made to be ; seeing the 
 face of God, and finding it the face of the 
 Father. 
 
 18
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 HE spring passed, and summer came 
 to Epidaphne. 
 
 The streams which had prattled 
 like joyous children among the frag- 
 rant flowery thickets, now plashed and bub- 
 bled in the depths of dark foliage with a music 
 which bathed the very heart in delicious cool- 
 ness. Some blossoms had ripened into fruit, 
 the green of many corn-fields had mellowed 
 into gold. 
 
 The wild revelries in the groves of Epi- 
 daphne over the sun-god restored to life, were 
 passing on to the day of wild lamentings over 
 the sun-god slain. 
 
 The Jewish Festival of Rescue from the 
 Land of Bondage, with its symbols of the bit- 
 ter herbs and the spotless lamb slain, was over 
 in Jerusalem. It had been replaced by the 
 Festival of the First-fruits; the first golden 
 sheaves, the first loaves of the new harvest, 
 waved before the Holy of Holies. 
 
 Doubtless the veil rent from top to bottom 
 (410)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 early in that spring- had been repaired, and 
 the darkness and the void were unbroken in 
 the inner sanctuary, before which the venera- 
 ble rites of so many centuries continued to 
 be celebrated. 
 
 Some reason which he would not acknowl- 
 edge to any one, perhaps not to himself, kept 
 Onias from attempting to go up to Jerusalem 
 that year to keep any of the feasts. 
 
 To Esther the pilgrimage would have seem- 
 ed as a pilgrimage to the mount that burned 
 with fire. One thing only she would have 
 cared to visit there. One tomb. 
 
 Yet even this, rumors began to say, would 
 be found empty. Vague reports reached them 
 at Antioch of the disciples of the Crucified 
 having stolen the body of Him they loved so 
 dearly ; waking, as timid but affectionate 
 hearts too often do, to a desperate courage 
 when courage was too late to save. 
 
 To one of those rumors was added a strange 
 addition by way of explanation. 
 
 His disciples had stolen Him away while 
 the Roman guard set to watch the sepulchre 
 had slept ; the guard set to watch because He 
 Jiad said He would rise again from the dead. 
 
 For the first time since the fatal tidings had 
 reached her, and the first anguish had spent 
 itself, Esther seemed to awake from the stony 
 torpor into which she had fallen.
 
 4 I2 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 There had, then, been a promise of a Resur- 
 rection. There had been a feav of it among 
 His enemies. So strong a fear, that they had 
 asked for a Roman guard to watch the tomb. 
 The people who had risen in insurrection, a 
 few years before, at the introduction of any 
 Roman soldiers into Jerusalem, had been pos- 
 sessed with such a desperate fear that the 
 promise of their murdered victim might 
 prove true, that they had waived all Jewish 
 rights and Jewish prejudices, and entreated 
 the Governor for a guard the very Governor 
 from whom they had wrung the concession 
 not to introduce his troops and their standards 
 into Jerusalem. 
 
 The guard so dearly purchased had not suc- 
 ceeded in its purpose. 
 
 Roman soldiers had slept at their post, had 
 committed an unpardonable offence against 
 Roman discipline, and had suffered this crime 
 of theirs to be spoken of openly. 
 
 In spite of the Roman guard, a few disap- 
 pointed and broken-hearted Galileans had 
 rescued from the tomb the dishonored form 
 no dishonor could make less or dear to them. 
 From a tomb close to the walls of the city. 
 
 What could this mean ? 
 
 The words of the Sufferer had indeed been 
 mighty, since His unavenged death could 
 leave them still so strong.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Could there be, after all could there pos- 
 sibly be even yet a hope? another side to 
 this perplexed rumor? another page in this 
 most mournful history ? a hope for-those who 
 love Him yet? 
 
 Once more, with that faint glimmer of a 
 hope, tears came to the Jewess, and prayers, 
 and a venturing once more, though with 
 trembling hands, to open the sacred Scrip- 
 tures of her people, which for weeks had been 
 to her as Sinai, as the mount which must not 
 be touched, from which at any time might 
 burst forth the slumbering thunders and the 
 lightnings of most just menace, scorching her 
 heart. 
 
 Once more, in the little inner chamber open- 
 ing on the garden, the two women, Diodora 
 and Esther, sat together searching the ancient 
 books. But this time it was Esther who was 
 longing with trembling passionate longing for 
 some clear message. On Diodora had dawn- 
 ed the hope and the calm. 
 
 And as they looked and listened a new 
 world seemed to arise before the Jewess, 
 which she had not seen there before. New 
 forms seemed to start up out of the old pages ; 
 dim and shadowy indeed, and dissolving into 
 something else, or into darkness, just when 
 they seemed becoming clearest. Or rather, 
 indeed, it seemed One Form, most majestic
 
 414 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 and most sorrowful, claiming for Himself a 
 supremacy in sorrow ; honored with an honor 
 above that due to man, yet trampled under 
 foot, a worm and no man ; beloved above all 
 by God, yet feeling forsaken by God ; bruised 
 by the enemy, yet destroying him ; vanquish- 
 ed, yet victorious ; always a Promise shining 
 through every promise, a Hope strong beyond 
 every fulfilled hope, a Seed of Abraham still 
 longed for after Isaac was born, a Lawgiver 
 anticipated by the great Lawgiver himself, 
 the Conqueror of a Rest Joshua never gave, 
 Shepherd to the flocks of God such as David 
 could not be, King with a majesty and an 
 universal dominion such as Solomon never 
 reached. And yet through all the notes of 
 triumph Esther began to hear tones of anguish 
 unutterable, of sorrow which no sorrow could 
 equal, as superhuman as the majesty ; of woe 
 which was no accident but an essential attri- 
 bute, woe borne willingly, yet crushing the 
 sufferer to the dust ; an agony intertwined 
 with all the victory, as if essential to the vic- 
 tory and the redemption it wrought. Such a 
 strange blending and conflict of power and 
 weakness, of majesty and mockery, of suffer- 
 ing and triumph, that it is said some old inter- 
 preters had thought there must be two Mes- 
 siahs, one to suffer and one to reign. Could 
 it be possible that all these dim and broken
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 415 
 
 foreshadowings met in Him who had raised 
 the dead in Galilee, and died unresisting at 
 Jerusalem ? 
 
 Then vain indeed would be the Jewish 
 stratagem and the Gentile guard. No power 
 on earth or in hell could baffle His resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 But if indeed He rose, with what terror on 
 the patient brows, with what lightnings around 
 the despised and tortured form ! 
 
 The pillar of fire whence of old the God of 
 Israel troubled Pharaoh and his host, as they 
 struggled drowning in the returning waters, 
 would be but a child's terror to the sight of 
 the Face they had mocked, drooping on the 
 cross the Face of the betrayed King, who 
 might have been their King, and was now the 
 King of the world, and their Judge. 
 
 And He, it seemed, had said He would rise 
 again ! His disciples believed it ; his enemies 
 feared it. 
 
 And something had happened, which his mur- 
 derers explained by saying a guard of Roman 
 soldiers had slept at their post. 
 
 *v "K* * 3$ 
 
 Meanwhile, as Diodora read, once again the 
 iron entered her soul, ploughing the old fur- 
 row. Once more the two pervading presences 
 of those ancient Books took their absorbing 
 place in her heart. Once more the thought
 
 416 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of God holy, infinite, immutable rose be- 
 fore her in all its majesty ; and the thought of 
 sin sank before her in all its depth of degra- 
 dation. 
 
 If, as she felt, the life and death of that 
 beneficent and patient Sufferer made immor- 
 tality for Him a certainty, if the chasm 
 between man and God in Him ceased to be, 
 was there not still an impassable gulf between 
 Him and other men? If, as it seemed, He 
 Himself were without sin, and therefore with- 
 out separation from God, did not that very 
 sinlessness separate Him as far almost as God 
 Himself from sinful men ? If immortality had 
 become more than a probability through His 
 being suffered to die, what was to ensure im- 
 mortality being a going home to God for any 
 but Him ? 
 
 The race which included Him and His 
 murderers must surely include two very con- 
 trary destinies. The same Father's house, 
 the same divine Patria, could scarcely include 
 Him and Tiberius Caesar, or the endless grades 
 of character between Him and Tiberius Caesar. 
 Where did the chasm between him and other 
 men begin ? Where the reconciliation be- 
 tween man and his God ? 
 
 If the question of immortality seemed solved 
 in Him, what of the questions below and be- 
 yond it? what of sin and forgiveness? If
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 417 
 
 the link between Him and God was not to be 
 broken, where was the link between Him and 
 man? 
 
 So once more the old Book ploughed its 
 problems into the hearts of those who searched 
 it ; and still the solution had not fully come.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 T last the tidings came to Antioch 
 that something altogether new was 
 indeed happening at Jerusalem ; per- 
 plexing beyond all perplexities, un- 
 less it was to be a solution of perplexities ; 
 dissolving the old order into chaos, the most 
 chaotic element in the old chaos unless, in- 
 deed, the beginning of a new order. 
 
 It was said that the little band of disciples, 
 chiefly Galileans, who had followed the Naza- 
 rene, instead of being scattered by His death, 
 had been gathered into a body, compact and 
 firm, as it had never been before deprived of 
 its Head. 
 
 A knot of timid peasants and fishermen, 
 slow to learn, and possessed with ideas of His 
 destiny totally different from that of their 
 Master, seemed suddenly to have become 
 together, a living community, united by in- 
 dissoluble bonds ; and, separately, each one a 
 living power, endowed with something of the 
 (418)
 
 VICTORY OF -TEE VANQUISHED. 
 
 character and aims of the Master they had 
 lost. 
 
 The characteristics of His teaching had been 
 that He made Himself the substance of it ; 
 that, unlike all the ancient true lovers of wis- 
 dom, He had persistently turned the thoughts 
 of His disciples from His doctrine to Himself. 
 And now He Himself had vanished from the 
 world, to all appearance defeated, dishonor- 
 ed, dead ; and His doctrine was spreading as 
 in His life it had never spread, pricking the 
 consciences of men and enkindling their 
 hearts by thousands. 
 
 The characteristic of His disciples had been 
 a devoted personal attachment to Himself a 
 clinging, reverent affection a hanging on 
 His words a watchful responsiveness to His 
 very looks. And now that the Object of a 
 love so adoring and dependent had been 
 taken from them for ever by a death so full of 
 failure, and pain, and shame, instead of their 
 life becoming one long mourning for their 
 lost Lord, they were said to be living in a 
 glow of gladness that could not be concealed 
 meeting continually in the Temple, singing 
 praises to God, and, by their very certainty 
 and joy, winning multitudes to believe as 
 they did. 
 
 The explanation : many believed He had 
 risen from the dead. They were sure of it.
 
 420 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 They had seen Him again and again in the 
 early gray of morning, at noon, at evening ; 
 outside the sepulchre, with the useless grave- 
 clothes folded inside ; in an upper room of 
 the Temple itself; on the slopes of Olivet; 
 on the familiar beaches of the lake of Galilee. 
 
 He had spoken to them by name, and to 
 two especially, the Magdalene and Peter the 
 faithful love that yearned for recognition, and 
 the unfaithful love that might have dreaded 
 it. 
 
 He had eaten with them. He had been the 
 guest of two of them at supper, and had bro- 
 ken bread in the way so familiar to them. 
 He had made them His guests on the sea- 
 shore in Galilee, waiting for them after the 
 weary night of unsuccessful fishing, with the 
 little fire of coals, and the simple fishermen's 
 fare on it ; no ambrosia or nectar, but broiled 
 fish and bread. 
 
 No mere midnight apparition, no vision, no 
 mysterious voice : " It is I Myself." 
 
 They had seen' Him, seen the prints in 
 hands or side ; touched Him, listened to Him. 
 He had quietly explained to them the things 
 concerning Himself in the ancient Scriptures. 
 
 Again and again they had seen Him, only 
 with one difference. He was no longer a 
 denizen of this lower world. 
 
 And at last they had seen Him ascend at
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 421 
 
 Bethany, near the old familiar home of the 
 brother and sister He loved. 
 
 Quietly, naturally, as a matter of course, 
 ascending from this unworthy world that had 
 so dishonored Him in no magnificent burst 
 of storms ; taken up to heaven in no imperial 
 chariot of fire, no legions of angels visibly 
 bearing Him aloft not even the few who 
 sang to the shepherds when He was born ; 
 only soaring through the air as easily as He 
 had trodden the sea, hidden from their strain- 
 ing eyes by a simple, ordinary cloud. The 
 Master, as He rose, lifting up His hands, and 
 blessing them, as He had blessed their simple 
 food so often before. Lord of sea, and air, 
 and earth, and heaven, and man. Soaring to 
 his throne on the right hand of God. 
 
 They went back as He had told them, as 
 two of his angels came to remind them. They 
 went back to Jerusalem. 
 
 Not in gazing after Him into heaven, not 
 even in living on the memory of His life, were 
 their lives to be spent. 
 
 By no slowly-decaying impulse of a Found- 
 er was His kingdom launched ; but by the 
 inspiration of a perpetual Presence, and a 
 perpetually renewed life. 
 
 They waited in Jerusalem, still the little 
 flock of faithful men and women, until some 
 power came upon them which divested them
 
 422 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of all fear, and endowed them with an elo- 
 quence which in one day raised their numbers 
 from the hundred and twenty He left, to three 
 thousand. 
 
 The Christ had vanished from sight into 
 heaven. But the Church had come into be- 
 ing, and for a time at least shone manifestly, a 
 light and a joy to all around.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 Church had been born into the 
 world. But as yet she knew not 
 herself; knew not her strength, nor 
 J her nature, the glory of her destiny, 
 
 or the bitterness of the cup she would have 
 to drink ; knew only the glory of her Lord, 
 and the bitter cup He had drunk for her. 
 
 What every fresh child's life is in the homes 
 it brightens, for a brief time the Church was 
 in this worn old world. 
 
 The gladness and singleness of heart, the 
 crown and glory of childhood were on her, 
 and she, like her Lord in His childhood at 
 Nazareth, for a time had favor with all the 
 people. 
 
 A serene childhood, touching and winning 
 the hearts of men in that weary, faded old 
 world. 
 
 It was into no legendary life of innocence 
 and faith that the glory of that fresh life 
 came. 
 
 (4*3)
 
 424 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 The age of Tiberius Caesar, of the Rhetori- 
 cians, of the Contractors, of the Gladiatorial 
 Games, was no spring-time of the world. 
 
 The Church had begun to live at Jerusa- 
 lem. But as yet she had little sense of her 
 universal dominion. To herself, in great part, 
 as well as to those outside, she seemed still a 
 sect of the Jews. She was not yet christened. 
 Not at Jerusalem did she find her trua name. 
 
 The first joy was enough for those first 
 days. 
 
 The Lord was risen indeed, and had shed 
 forth that marvellous power, anointing one 
 after another out of the palaces of His glad- 
 ness with the oil of joy, as kings. That the 
 anointing of the kings was also that of the 
 wrestlers, did not as yet appear. 
 
 He was risen. He was living. He was 
 forgiving. In heaven, at God's right hand ; 
 on earth at their right hand, every day to the 
 end of the world. 
 
 It would be some time before more truth 
 could be learned, or more joy contained in 
 human hearts, than this. 
 
 Moreover, beyond all this joy of the past 
 thus brought to their remembrance, of His 
 presence with them assured to their hearts, 
 rose the joy of the future which would crown 
 all. 
 
 He was coming again.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 425 
 
 For a little while the heavens had received 
 Him. For a little while they were here to 
 turn the hearts of men to Him. Diligent and 
 joyful must they be for that little while, 
 touching the treasures of earth very lightly, 
 and very little disturbed by its storms. 
 
 But as yet the Church remained at Jerusa- 
 lem. Elsewhere, there were only a few Jews 
 whose hearts might be stirred with wonder 
 at the things happening- at Jerusalem ; and a 
 few Gentile proselytes, who might faintly 
 catch the echo, and carry it on. 
 
 On the heathen world, as yet, no sign that 
 the Light had indeed dawned for them. 
 
 In the Jewish synagogues, no suspicion that 
 any Gentile would ever approach God, except 
 by becoming, as far as possible, a Jew. 
 x * * * -* # 
 
 A great stir and movement agitated the 
 hearts of the little company at Antioch, as in 
 broken fragments the rumors of these things 
 reached them. 
 
 Confused murmurs floated hither and thith- 
 er of miracles of healing, of rapturous speech 
 in many tongues, of a pouring of separate 
 possessions into a common store, all barriers 
 of selfishness swept over by a flood of joy and 
 loyalty. 
 
 But above all rose distinct the great fact
 
 426 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 that this community was founded on the Res- 
 urrection. 
 
 " It was a strange age," old Laon said, " for 
 such mystical enthusiasm and child-like over- 
 flowings of generosity. A hard, prosaic, un- 
 believing age. While this golden age of in- 
 nocence and sunshine, this ideal, Platonic 
 republic or whatever you liked to term it 
 was rising into life at Jerusalem, at Capreae 
 the aged Emperor was vainly trying to ex- 
 tract one drop of new pleasure out of this dry, 
 withered world ; at Pandataria, the dead prin- 
 cess Agrippina had at last reached her long- 
 desired repose, through the agonies of volun- 
 tary starvation. At Rome, the god Caesar 
 and the Mint-goddess were being diligently 
 served ; new men were devising ways to 
 build new fortunes, and old families were 
 struggling to restore lost fortunes by con- 
 tracting for the taxation of the provinces. 
 Rhetoricians were teaching the young Ro- 
 mans how to use words which had once 
 grown, living, around living thought and 
 feeling, to conceal the absence of thought and 
 feeling. The strongest agents of Government 
 were the Informers ; the mass of the citizens 
 were regarding their political rights as mere 
 coin to purchase personal advantages with. 
 Faith in the gods and in men, in the family 
 in the country, in virtue, and in truth," he
 
 VICTORY OF TUB VANQUISHED. 427 
 
 said, " had vanished. With faith in each 
 other, faith in themselves had died in the 
 hearts of men, and nothing remained but a 
 blind love of self." 
 
 The Emperor and the Romans were living 
 in perpetual terror of each other: Tiberius 
 afraid to enter Rome, and the Romans crouch- 
 ing in bewildered terror before the Informers 
 the lives of both so embittered and cramped 
 by mutual fear, that they fluctuated between 
 cruelty and vice, as the only pleasures left. 
 
 While the morning songs of thanksgiving 
 and the joy of forgiveness were pouring from 
 the lips of the Christians at Jerusalem, at Ca- 
 preas this terrible cry of despair was wrung 
 from the heart of Tiberius, " What I shall 
 write to you, Conscript Fathers, or what not 
 write, the gods and goddesses make me per- 
 ish with a worse destruction than that by which 
 I am perishing every day, if I know !" 
 
 Few contrasts so strong have come so close 
 to each other as that new Song of Eternal Life, 
 and that cynical wail of inward eternal death. 
 
 " Force was the only thing," Laon said, 
 " really believed in, in that hard, smooth, old, 
 Roman world, the force of the Imperial 
 Government on earth ; the force of a black 
 magic to wrench, from those who kept them, 
 the secrets of the future and the unseen."
 
 428 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 And in such a world appeared this living, 
 loving, rejoicing community ; poor and de- 
 fenceless, but gloriously liberated from all 
 fear, mightily lifted above all force ; built on 
 faith in God, in each other, and in that mighty 
 Master. They appeared not in some remote 
 region of pastoral simplicity, but in the heart 
 of one of the world's great cities not a holy 
 city, but a city of political intrigue and petty 
 traffic ; of bargaining, even with God, about 
 tithes of mint, anise, and cummin ; of the dri- 
 est ceremonialism, and the fiercest partizan- 
 ship. They aimed at no vestal isolation or 
 supernatural spiritualism. They aimed at be- 
 ing good men and women. They won men 
 and women of every rank and party to join 
 them. And amidst that corrupt society, all 
 who did join them at once partook of this 
 love and faith and joy. 
 
 Old Laon looked on, and confessed it was 
 strange a rare exclamation from him. He 
 could link it on to no old facts, and explain it 
 away into no old doctrine. 
 
 " If this had sprung up in some mystical 
 forest of your young German world," he said 
 to Siward, " I might have understood it. But 
 such a fresh growth from these dry old trunks 
 is not so easily to be comprehended. We 
 must wait and watch." 
 
 From Hilda a great weight seemed removed.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 429 
 
 If the Resurrection was indeed true, she 
 thought, this might yet be a world in which 
 little children and their gladness might not 
 be out of place. Dim glimpses came to the 
 young mother and father of a religion which 
 might consecrate not only death and sorrow, 
 but joy and love, life and beauty, nature and 
 art ; not the unseen only, but the body, and 
 the visible world. 
 
 On Siward also arose faint, far-off hopes of a 
 liberation for the world, of a victory for the 
 vanquished, for his people, for all people ; if, 
 indeed, beyond the cross, and through the 
 cross, could be reached a life which seemed 
 to be still a life of activity and power towards 
 this world. 
 
 The perplexities of Onias were only revived 
 and increased by the tidings. After all, then, 
 it might not prove such a complete safeguard 
 not to have happened to be in Jerusalem on 
 that fatal day. He might yet have to decide 
 which cause to espouse. He, with his capital 
 so painfully acquired and so securely invested, 
 might yet have to be brought face to face with 
 penetrating questions, to which it was impos- 
 sible to give vague answers might even yet 
 be harassed by applications to commit him- 
 self and his possessions to a community who 
 had shown themselves capable of a fanaticism 
 of all others most fatal to property and the
 
 430 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 due preservation of social distinctions the 
 fanaticism of a community of goods. 
 
 For, with Esther at his side, he at least 
 would find it impossible to keep these agitat- 
 ing novelties at a distance. 
 
 To her, life and death were involved in the 
 truth of this fact of the Resurrection ; the life 
 or death, before all else, of her people of 
 Israel. 
 
 This, then, was the explanation of that per- 
 plexed rumor about the empty sepulchre, and 
 the Roman soldiers slumbering at their post. 
 
 The King, the Anointed, the Son of God, 
 rejected of Israel, betrayed by His own people 
 to the Romans, mocked in His dying, actually 
 risen from the dead, living with God ! And 
 yet, not a menace of vengeance on the rebels, 
 His betrayers and murderers ! 
 
 Nothing but forgiveness, reconciliation, en- 
 treaties, even, it was said, to all to be recon- 
 ciled to Him. 
 
 The very worst crime possible had been 
 committed. Was nothing lost by it ? 
 
 Was Israel indeed, renewed by faith in this 
 ascended King, invisible, but working most 
 mightily still, still to be the centre and source 
 of life to the nations ? 
 
 There was no sign of any change in the 
 Gentile world. The believers were all Jews. 
 The city of David, the city of the great King,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 43! 
 
 was still the city of the Christ and His dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 It was in the old Temple, on its ancient 
 heights, that they "met and poured forth their 
 new psalms. 
 
 Reports came, indeed, of an opposition still 
 continued by the Sanhedrim, of some of the 
 leaders of the new community being impris- 
 oned and beaten. 
 
 But the persecution seemed neither to have 
 checked their joy nor the increase of their 
 numbers. 
 
 Was it only a beginning? 
 
 If so, to what would it grow ? 
 
 Or was it a beginning of the terrible end ? 
 A gathering of the elect into the citadel be- 
 fore the battles with burning and fire ; a little 
 gleam of light before the day of storms and 
 thick darkness, of the shaking once more not 
 of earth only but also of heaven, the day of 
 the great slaughter when the towers should 
 fall ? A gathering of the righteous into the 
 Ark before the floods came, floods of fire, to 
 which the ancient world-deluge would be as 
 nothing ? 
 
 For Clcelia Diodora, the tidings of the Res- 
 urrection from the sepulchre awakened min- 
 gled feelings. 
 
 If she could have been absolutely assured in
 
 432 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 any other way of continued deathless life in 
 power and joy, she would contentedly have 
 dispensed with the thought of the body being 
 raised. 
 
 Was this thing, which had been to her the 
 source of so much hindrance and disquiet, not 
 indeed to be done with once for all when it was 
 laid in the grave, or consumed on the pyre ? 
 
 Was this bodily life, which her beloved had 
 lost, indeed thought of value enough to be 
 delivered or be restored ? 
 
 She had found a kind of joy in despising 
 and heaping indignities on this fleshly prison 
 from which her beloved had been delivered. 
 
 If to that holiest Sufferer it had been re- 
 stored, there was then still some defect in the 
 condition of her dead. 
 
 It seemed as if the resurrection of One 
 threw a shadow on the immortality and the 
 perfection of the rest. 
 
 Moreover, how, and from what cause, had 
 He risen ? Was it not from a cause which 
 isolated Him from the rest of humanity ? Had 
 not He, as the holiest Son of men, risen by 
 virtue of His superiority to other men, per- 
 haps by virtue of His being in some mysteri- 
 ous, separate sense a Son of God ? 
 
 Still, moreover, from those heavens no word 
 seemed to come for the Gentiles. 
 
 Into that heavenly Temple, as in the Tern-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 433 
 
 pie at Jerusalem, was there then no admission 
 save for the Jew ? To all ages, for all but His 
 race, nothing but a dim longing for His shad- 
 ow to pass by, for some far-off echo of His 
 voice ? 
 
 A proclamation of pardon had indeed, it 
 was said, been sent from heaven to His be- 
 trayers and murderers ; but only, as far as 
 could be understood, to Jews : to Jews, who 
 had done Him the utmost dishonor and 
 wrong ; but not, it seemed, to any Gentiles, 
 even if they would have desired above all 
 things to pay Him homage. 
 
 Indeed, as far as she could gather, the utter- 
 ances of His followers seemed to be less uni- 
 versal than His own ; the disciples more Jew- 
 ish than the Master. 
 
 Jews of every nation under heaven had 
 heard, and believed, and been accepted ; but 
 of those nations themselves, not one. 
 
 What access was there for the Gentile ? 
 
 If through the Jews by taking the lowliest 
 position which could associate them with the 
 nation He had loved on earth and now loved 
 in heaven, even the lowliest position might be 
 welcome. 
 
 But what sign was there of even such an 
 expansion of the old boundaries ? 
 
 The link between God and this dying, riven 
 Son of man, seemed perfect. 
 19
 
 434 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 There seemed to be a link acknowledged 
 between Him, the Jewish Christ, and the 
 Jew. 
 
 But where was the link between the Gen- 
 tile and the Jew, the Jewish Christ, the Son 
 of God? 
 
 Another defeat was to precede the Victory 
 which opened the way to that further univer- 
 sal Conquest. 
 
 Another vanquished, and another Victory.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 HE votive altar to Germanicus at 
 Antioch, where his funeral pyre had 
 been raised, and the Tribunal at 
 Epidaphne, where he had died, might 
 be visited now without arousing Imperial sus- 
 picions. 
 
 The ashes of Agrippina might be removed 
 from their dishonored grave on the lonely 
 island of Pandataria, and laid beside the ashes 
 of her husband in the Imperial Mausoleum 
 by the Tiber. 
 
 The Emperor was dead. The long strain 
 was over, with which for so many years he 
 and Rome had watched against each other ; 
 the Emperor as a keeper with his eye and 
 hand ceaselessly fixed on the wild beast, which, 
 if he turned aside for an instant is ready to 
 spring at him ; " holding the wolf by the ears ;" 
 Rome, with her eyes on him as on a madman 
 who could only be kept from some frightful 
 
 (435)
 
 436 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 caprice of malice by incessant deference and 
 amusement. 
 
 The long watch was relaxed at last. The 
 restraining grasp had collapsed ; and now 
 throughout the Empire men began to say 
 aloud the hateful things they had long be- 
 lieved of him, things of which it is almost as 
 terrible to think they should have been credi- 
 ble at Rome, as that they should have been 
 practicable at Capreas. 
 
 But until the very last, that watch of mu- 
 tual terror did not relax in the slightest de- 
 gree. 
 
 To the last the physicians dared not let the 
 Emperor know they thought him dying. To 
 the last the Emperor dared not let the Romans 
 know that he was dying. Terribly awake to 
 the truth of facts around him as he had been 
 throughout his life, to the end his keen eyes 
 saw as clearly as ever, and saw only to dis- 
 trust. 
 
 For himself he created no illusions. For 
 years he had felt himself within the shadow 
 which must spread and darken before him, 
 until it blotted out the Universe. Old age 
 and Death made nothing dim to him ; they 
 only removed any dazzling haze which might 
 yet linger about the world, and left everything 
 distinctly and sharply outlined as if seen 
 through a vacuum.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 437 
 
 At times the mere clearness of the seeing 
 made it foreseeing. To some who were pay- 
 ing court to his nephew Caligula, he said : 
 " You leave the setting to court the rising 
 sun." To Caligula himself, " You will kill 
 my grandson, and some one else will kill you" 
 
 Yet he persisted in keeping the courtiers in 
 suspense and dread by refusing to name his 
 successor, and by occasionally throwing out 
 hints that he might yet cause both his grand- 
 son and his nephew to die before himself. 
 
 Few passages in history have a more unre- 
 lieved blackness than those last days of Tibe- 
 rius. The story is too mean to be called 
 tragical. Even the defiance of death, which 
 in an old Norse warrior might have had some- 
 thing heroic in it, in Tiberius is merely revolt- 
 ing. It is so evidently one terror held in 
 check by another; the dread of dying van- 
 quished by the dread of seeming death-stricken 
 to the Romans; lest, at any moment, before 
 his hand relaxed in death, the wolf he had 
 cowed so long should turn and spring on him 
 and have the mastery. 
 
 On his last journey towards Rome, seven 
 miles from the city, terrified by a bad omen, 
 he turned back along the Appian way. Yet 
 after a sensible increase of illness and languor, 
 at Circeii he roused himself to preside once 
 more at the games, and even to throw jave-
 
 438 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 lins at the wild beasts in the Amphitheatre. 
 The Romans had called him " morose," be- 
 cause he did not delight enough in the gladi- 
 atorial combats. Some Romans now deemed 
 his strength failing. He would show them all 
 their double mistake. 
 
 At the villa of Lucullus, however, he had 
 to pause, before once more, he could retire 
 from Campania to his retreat at Capreae. 
 
 He dismissed his physician. 
 
 The physician in taking leave contrived to 
 press an enquiring finger on his pulse. 
 
 The sick man observed it, and insisted that 
 night on prolonging the festivities beyond the 
 usual hour. 
 
 Yet at the very last, in spite of all his pre^ 
 cautions, it was believed the terror which had 
 haunted all his life proved true. 
 
 He rallied once too often for the patience 
 of his attendants. They suffocated him with 
 his pillows. 
 
 # # * * 
 
 " The wolf he dreaded has vanquished at 
 last," old Laon said, when he heard it. " Ti- 
 berius Csesar was right. ' Men are mortal, but 
 the State is eternal' It is a hopeless struggle 
 with a wild beast which will be as strong as 
 ever for its deadly spring when the restraining 
 human hand relaxes its grasp for ever. Now 
 the worshipers of Tiberius are free to erect
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 439 
 
 him as many temples as they please. During 
 his life-time, he restrained their enthusiasm. 
 Now their adoration can rise freely. If it has 
 anything of the character of the worship of 
 this new Jewish Sect at Jerusalem, whose 
 adoration has gathered strength from death, 
 now is the time for its expansion." 
 
 Meantime, at Rome the citizens were shout- 
 ing over the Emperor's corpse, " Tiberius to 
 the Tiber!" and throwing their whole ener- 
 gies into the welcome of the young Emperor, 
 who was henceforth to be their Divine Dis- 
 penser of bread and games. 
 
 Once more Caius Csesar Caligula walked 
 in a funeral procession along the Appian way. 
 
 Eighteen years before, a child of seven, he 
 had accompanied his mother, the widowed 
 Agrippina, from Brundusium, with the sacred 
 urn containing his father's ashes. 
 
 Even on his childish imagination, the throng- 
 ing of the people from village and town, the 
 burning of incense and of costly raiment, 
 the silence and the tears of such a multitude 
 must have stamped an indelible impression. 
 
 And now it was Germanicus again the peo- 
 ple were welcoming back, in the person of 
 his son. Altars greeted him on all sides, with 
 incense and sacrifices ; torches and flowers 
 and rapturous welcomes, such as, on another 
 spring day, one May, twenty years ago, had
 
 440 VICTORY OF THE VANQUJSHEV. 
 
 greeted his father's triumph, when as an infant 
 of four years old, the darling of the legions, 
 Caligula had ascended the Capitol, with his 
 four boy brothers, in the Triumphal Chariot 
 by his father's side. 
 
 Father, mother and brothers, all were dead ; 
 it was believed, all through the murderous 
 sway of Tiberius. And now again the Italians 
 in this procession were celebrating, not the 
 obsequies of Tiberius, but the Triumph of the 
 race of their Germanicus. 
 
 They welcomed the young Emperor as the 
 child of the beloved of Rome. They lav- 
 ished caressing names on him, calling him 
 their "nursling," their "chicken," their "pup- 
 pet," and to the end persisting in distinguish- 
 ing him (not to his own satisfaction) by the 
 pet name given to him by the legions, among 
 whom his father and mother had their early 
 home. 
 
 There is a pathetic irony in the fact that the 
 prince whom the nations learned to execrate 
 as a monster of cruelty, continues to be called 
 in the gravest histories by the name of the 
 baby military boots, which the soldiers lik- 
 ed to see him wear in the camp on the 
 Rhine. 
 
 Twenty years had passed since the multi- 
 tudes had gathered in a tumult of exulting 
 welcome around Germanicus the Conqueror ;
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 44! 
 
 eighteen, since they had gathered silent and 
 weeping around his ashes. 
 
 And now they met, once more full of hope 
 and confidence ; once more trusting they had 
 found the heart they could rest on, the hand 
 that could lead them. 
 
 # * * # 
 
 And meantime the heart the whole world 
 may rest on had been broken on the Cross ; 
 the Hand that can lead all the flocks of men 
 had been nailed by man to the Cross. 
 
 He who came not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister, who had compassion on the 
 multitudes because they were scattered abroad 
 as sheep having no Shepherd, the True Shep- 
 herd of men had ministered to men, had given 
 His life a ransom for men, had risen to His 
 Father's throne, and from it was slowly gath- 
 ering His flock from the East and the West, 
 the North and the South, a great multitude 
 which no man can number. 
 
 The Voice, not of the stranger, had been 
 heard. The great gathering and separating 
 of the flock had begun. 
 
 But the multitudes of men as yet knew 
 not of it, and wistfully looked to Caius Cassar 
 Caligula, to be their Prince and their Saviour. 
 
 At first he seemed in many ways to meet 
 their expectations. He pardoned royally, and 
 gave royally, fulfilling the dying bequests of 
 19*
 
 442 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 the Empress Livia, which her own son, Tiber- 
 ius, had neglected. He also worked royally, 
 throwing himself with a passionate energy 
 during the summer months into the enor- 
 mous labors devolving on a rule which had 
 absorbed so many powers into itself. 
 
 And then, the good things he had inherited 
 from a high and virtuous ancestry seemed to 
 sink and be lost beneath the corruptions of 
 his training at Capreas, and the intoxication 
 of his intolerable position. He is said to have 
 abandoned himself with a phrenzy of license 
 to every kind of pleasure, in eight months to 
 have thus brought himself to the brink of the 
 grave ; and to have returned from the brink 
 of the grave, a madman, totally bereft of 
 self-control ; yet still invested with the su- 
 preme control of the whole Roman world ; 
 clever, witty, keen-sighted, but insane ; in- 
 sane and the Emperor and god of Rome. 
 
 The worship which Tiberius had refused, it 
 became his moody pleasure to insist on. His 
 making the Temple of Hercules a mere por- 
 tico to his own palace on the Palatine, was a 
 symbol of the place he claimed. The Tem- 
 ples of all the gods were to be porticoes to 
 his. Some men might have a special devo- 
 tion for one divinity, some for another. He, 
 the true Latin Jove, claimed the devotion of 
 all.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 443 
 
 Such was the sway beneath which the in- 
 fant Church had to grow, beneath which she 
 began the Conquest of the World. 
 
 As yet she was too insignificant to attract 
 the attention of the Emperor, or even of the 
 chiefs under him. 
 
 Her first persecution arose from that an- 
 cient nation of which she still believed herself 
 a part. 
 
 Not as the subjects of a king claiming 
 universal Empire, but as an apostate from the 
 old Jewish law, the first martyr fell ; not as a 
 rebel against Rome, but as a heretic.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 4 4 \^*^$0i\HEN they which were scattered 
 abroad upon the persecution that 
 arose about Stephen travelled as 
 far as Phenice and Cyprus and 
 Antioch, preaching the word to none but to 
 the Jews only. 
 
 And some of them were men of Cyprus and 
 Cyrene, which, when they were come to An- 
 tioch spake unto the Greeks, preaching the 
 Lord Jesus. 
 
 And the hand of the Lord was with them, 
 and a great number believed, and turned to 
 the Lord. 
 
 Simple, unemphasized words, yet contain- 
 ing in them the record of the foundation of 
 the Church ; of the transition from Judaism 
 to Christendom. 
 
 At last, the invasion of the world by the 
 Church had begun. 
 
 To those who first entered the opening, it 
 
 (444)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 445 
 
 seemed not a portal into a new world, but a 
 breach in the walls of the old ; not a gathering 
 but a scattering. 
 
 The law of the Kingdom, expansion through 
 ruin, Victory through the Vanquished, death 
 through life, the crown through the Cross, 
 growth through dissolution, had begun to 
 
 act. 
 
 * # * * & * 
 
 At last the missing link came into the hands 
 of Cloelia Diodora. Into the heart so long 
 broken, at last the true healing balm was 
 poured. 
 
 The chasm so rudely rent, and hollowed so 
 deep, was filled to the brim, filled to over- 
 flowing with the waters of life, ready to pour 
 forth in blessing on all around. 
 
 Feeling to the core of her heart the death 
 that gnaws at the heart of all the visible world, 
 life and immortality were brought to light for 
 her. 
 
 Feeling deeper still the sin which is the 
 death in life, the death in death, forgiveness 
 came to her. 
 
 Feeling the terrible isolation of her own lot, 
 without father, mother, brother, or sister, new 
 relationships were revealed to her, new, yet 
 older than her life ; love familiar with every 
 secret of her life and character. 
 
 In heaven she found the Father.
 
 446 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 On earth, truest and tenderest ties of kin- 
 dred ; " brothers, sisters, mothers." 
 . And all these through and in One. 
 
 Child of God in the Son of God. 
 
 Sister in the redeemed Family through 
 Him who was not ashamed to call us brethren. 
 
 Redeemed to be no more her own. Set 
 free to serve. 
 
 Words of infinite joy and perfect freedom. 
 
 "Not our own." Redeemed from the bondage 
 of self-seeking, from the isolation of self-will. 
 
 Belonging to Him who had given His life 
 a ransom for her, had sought her wandering, 
 brought her back to God ; belonging for ever 
 to that Crucified Conqueror,, to that patient 
 King ; belonging in Him to the Father Who 
 had loved her from the beginning. 
 
 No more drifting aimlessly to and fro on 
 the sea of life ! Piloted ! 
 
 Glorious contradictions of Christian life ! 
 
 Nothing changed; yet everything changed. 
 
 Not a burden lightened ; not a sorrow re- 
 moved ; not a new faculty bestowed. 
 
 The crippled, suffering body, crippled and 
 suffering still. The bereaved -heart still ' be- 
 reft of the sight and voice and touch of its 
 dearest. 
 
 But the burden changed from a shapeless, 
 meaningless load, into a Cross, into the like- 
 ness of what He had borne ; into a yoke, no
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 447 
 
 more pressing on the neck bowed beneath it, 
 but binding it to the appointed work ; into a 
 sacrifice accepted willingly in subjection to 
 the Father's will ; into a weapon of the great 
 warfare whereby the Victory of the Vanquish- 
 ed was to be for ever carried on. 
 
 Her lost beloved, her beautiful, who had so 
 patiently continued in well-doing, rescued as 
 she believed by Him who went and preached 
 unto the spirits in the unseen prison, now 
 reaping glory and honor and immortality, one 
 of the great Flock of the Redeemed, not afar 
 off, one Flock and one Shepherd, though not 
 yet one Fold. 
 
 For herself, every faculty consecrated, glori- 
 fied, stamped with the Image of the King, 
 made current coin of the heavenly kingdom, 
 an instrument of service in the hand of love. 
 
 Not Transformation ; new Creation ; every 
 old thing made new by being inspired through 
 and through with the new life. 
 
 Yet not more a new birth and a new life, or 
 a new world for her, or to any in those earli- 
 est days, than now to all, who receiving the 
 same Saviour receive in Him the revelation 
 of the eternal love, the power to become sons 
 of God. 
 
 Not merely a new impulse was Christianity, 
 breaking up the old world. It was a new life. 
 It is, as much as ever it was, not in us, nor in
 
 448 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 anything done for and in us, but in Him Who 
 has done and is ever doing all in us and for us ; 
 in Him Who not merely raises and quickens, 
 but is the Resurrection and the Life. 
 
 Nor only were suffering, death, and the un- 
 seen world consecrated in her eyes. 
 
 If the Cross had opened a path of light into 
 the world to which it had borne the Master, 
 if His death had hallowed dying, His Resur- 
 rection had opened her eyes again to this 
 visible world, as His creation, and His in- 
 heritance. If His burial had made the grave 
 the gate of heaven, His rising again had made 
 life its threshold. 
 
 If His " Thy ^vill not mine, be done," had con- 
 secrated sorrow, His " Peace be unto you" had 
 consecrated joy. 
 
 Not the life beyond this lower world only, 
 the life also of little children bounding along 
 the first steps of the long journey, every stage 
 and every station of life were sacred through 
 that human life which He had taken in its 
 infancy, borne without sin, resigned without 
 sin, and resumed never to part with more. 
 
 Not in the Cemetery only, and the solemn 
 night, in the Proseucha synagogue, but in 
 Hilda's home among the little children on the 
 sea-shores His feet had trodden, by the tables 
 whose fare He had blessed, that redemption 
 had made her at home.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 449 
 
 To Siward all the brightest hopes and most 
 earnest purposes of his youth came back, glori- 
 fied. 
 
 He had found the Deliverer and the King 
 Who set free by reigning, Who gave thje true 
 freedom, not of the forest, but of the King- 
 dom, Who began the liberation of men from 
 within by setting them free from the bondage 
 of self. 
 
 Christianity did not quench patriotism in 
 him, but exalted it, as every other pure hu- 
 man feeling. 
 
 The Church, in the early days of Divine 
 order and growth did not take the color and 
 shape out of the nationalities any more than 
 out of the character she embraced. 
 
 Her " In Christ Jesus, neither Jew nor 
 Greek," no more destroyed distinct national 
 ideals, than her " In Christ Jesus, neither male 
 nor female " destroyed the true manly and 
 womanly ideal. In Him nothing that charac- 
 terized was lost, only all that separated. Not 
 distinctions, only barriers, were broken down. 
 
 Never did Siward's heart beat more warm- 
 ly for his people, nor the hearts of Clcelia, 
 Callias and Esther for theirs than when they 
 began to see the fulfillment of the highest 
 ideal of Teutonic liberty, Roman duty, Greek 
 order and humanity, and Hebrew godliness 
 in the One Lord of all, and to hope for its ful-
 
 450 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 fillment in the One Family of many breth- 
 ren. 
 
 The new Kingdom had indeed begun, 
 which makes Antioch a place well nigh as 
 sacred .to the Church as Jerusalem. 
 
 If Jerusalem was the Bethlehem of the 
 Church, where the angels rejoiced and sang 
 " Peace and good-will to men " around the 
 manger of infant Christianity, Antioch was 
 its Nazareth, the first home of its conscious 
 youth ; the baptistry where its distinctive 
 name was given to it ; the first place where 
 the Jewish nation was incorporated into the 
 Universal Church as but one Province of the 
 Universal Empire ; where the Gates of Morn- 
 ing at length were flung open wide for the 
 Light to lighten the Gentiles. 
 
 The restless, keen-witted crowds of various 
 races which thronged the long colonnade by 
 the Orontes or ranged through the gardens of 
 Epidaphne little thought that in exercising 
 their faculty and license of giving character- 
 istic names on that little band of believers of 
 all nations, they were rendering a service to 
 the world ; and that when the gardens of Epi- 
 daphne had vanished, like an enchanted gar- 
 den in a desert, and the Orontes instead of 
 bathing marble temples, and crowded quays, 
 palaces and amphitheatres, should flow 
 through a poor little Syrian town, that one
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 45! 
 
 carelessly flung soubriquet should make the 
 name of Antioch familiar in countless homes 
 throughout the world. 
 
 " The disciples were first called Christians 
 at Antioch." 
 
 Do we think sufficiently what a commenda- 
 tion on those first disciples is involved in the 
 fact that such a title should be characteristic ?
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 LD LAON still held aloof, and kept 
 silence. Onias and Siguna were the 
 two members of the little society 
 whose hearts were least gladdened 
 by the tidings of great joy which, like the 
 music of the legend, drew the living stones 
 together and began the building of the City 
 of God. 
 
 For very different reasons. More than ever 
 Siguna longed for one more sight of Olave, 
 that they might yet rejoice together over the 
 treasure she had found. The conviction that 
 he was still living, that they should yet meet 
 face to face again on earth had never been 
 quenched in her heart. And now, in the light 
 of this new Hope, the old hope sprang up in 
 fresh vigor. 
 
 Her child Hilda w^is at home now in An- 
 tioch. She determined to remain no longer 
 away from Rome, but to spend the rest of 
 her life in that center of the world, watching 
 
 (45*)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 453 
 
 once again every company of captives, or 
 every stray band of wanderers which found 
 its way from the North to the City which to 
 so many of her countrymen still seemed a 
 Golden Home of gods. 
 
 Onias, on the other hand, was inextricably 
 perplexed by being brought into contact with 
 a question which absolutely demanded a de- 
 cision. 
 
 Between the recognition that the Nazarene 
 was the Messiah, and the declaration that He 
 had deceived the people, no vague and gener- 
 alizing neutrality was possible. It was not a 
 mere matter of religious opinion about which 
 there might be infinite shades of thought, from 
 a fervent acquiescence to a fanatical denial. It 
 was a question of loyalty or rebellion ; not a 
 devout notion about the other world, but a 
 practical test as to this ; a question which af- 
 fected acquaintanceships, daily acts, commer- 
 cial connections ; not the mere superfluous in- 
 come or expenditure of life, but its very es- 
 sence and capital. 
 
 For the Church which the Antiochenes 
 knew so well how to name characteristically 
 came among them as no mere glad and loving 
 child, half vividly conscious of her life but un- 
 conscious of her mission and her destiny. 
 
 At Antioch above the childlike robe of 
 gladness and singleness of heart which found
 
 454 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 favor with all the people, and which she must 
 ever wear next her heart, she had been endued 
 with the panoply of her warfare, and was no 
 longer merely breaking bread from house to 
 house, and praising God in the Temple, but 
 was going forth conquering and to conquer. 
 
 This warfare of the Church required the 
 material sinews of war. Whatever theory 
 may be adopted as to the use of the gift of 
 tongues in saving the first Christian Mission- 
 aries the necessity of learning languages, it 
 is clear that no gift of an inexhaustible purse 
 was bestowed on them, that Alexandrian corn 
 ships would not remit their fares for Apostles, 
 unless in the keeping of Centurions, that 
 houses could not be hired or tables spread in 
 Rome, or in Corinth, for nothing. 
 
 The community of goods at Jerusalem had 
 ended, as Onias had predicted, in the neces- 
 sity of contributions for the poor saints in 
 Judaea. And from the beginning it seemed 
 as if Antioch was expected to be one of the 
 Treasuries of the Church, a distinction which 
 must have involved continual decisions be- 
 tween God and Mammon from the rich mer- 
 chants and capitalists there. 
 
 Onias would have been quite content to 
 wait in a most tolerant spirit to see, by the 
 success or failure of the new doctrine, what 
 decision had been made about it in heaven.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 455 
 
 But the disciples of the new doctrine were 
 quite determined it should succeed ; the sub- 
 jects of the new Kingdom were determined 
 to conquer, to conquer if necessary, like the 
 King, by suffering and by dying ; and in this 
 way the decision was thrown, not on heaven, 
 but on the consciences of every man and 
 woman who came within hearing, which was 
 far more perplexing. 
 
 Moreover, with Esther by his side, quite 
 ready to risk everything, divested of all fear, 
 saying in her heart like Esther the Queen, 
 " If I perish, I perish" or with the Three Chil- 
 dren, " Our God Whom we serve is able to 
 save us, but if not" quite ready to be cast 
 into the furnace, whether to her it should 
 prove a " bed of roses," or a bed of anguish, 
 his difficulty was increased an hundred fold. 
 
 Tenderly she bore with the fretfulness and 
 anxious carefulness, which his perplexities 
 produced in the old man. She knew they 
 sprang from a root of bitterness within which 
 must at any cost be extracted, or it would 
 choke all the roots of truth and goodness 
 which she knew had once been there. 
 
 Any axe would have been welcome to her 
 which would be laid at the root of that corrupt 
 tree. And at last it came. 
 
 The Jews, stronger in faith and conscience
 
 456 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 than any other nation, even in this hour of 
 their fatal fall, alone, of all races throughout 
 the Empire, refused to give Divine honors to 
 Caligula. 
 
 Worship meant more to them than to any 
 other people because the Name of God meant 
 more. 
 
 Terrible tidings had reached Antioch of a 
 popular riot against the Jews at Alexandria. 
 Only a few years after the Jewish nation had 
 suffered her King to be crucified at Jerusalem, 
 the Greek and Coptic population of Alexan- 
 dria, always envious of the marvelous com- 
 mercial genius and success of the Jewish 
 colony there, were roused to fury by the ar- 
 rival among them of Herod Agrippa, with 
 the title freshly recognized by his friend the 
 Emperor, of King of the Jews. 
 
 That these Jewish merchants and brokers 
 should actually pretend to have a king of 
 their own was an assumption not to be toler- 
 ated. 
 
 In revengeful mockery, their Coptic and 
 Greek fellow-citizens paraded a Jewish idiot 
 through the streets, robed in ragged gar- 
 ments, with a reed in his right hand, crowned 
 with a crown of papyrus, and bent the knee 
 to him, presenting petitions to him, and hail- 
 ing him " Lord." 
 
 So fiercely was the cry of the Jewish priests,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 457 
 
 " We have no king but Ccesar" taken up and 
 hurled back at them by the Gentiles. 
 
 Persecution in its most terrible form, a per- 
 secution of the populace, followed. The Jews, 
 who possessed two out of tne five quarters of 
 the city, and were also scattered throughout 
 the rest of it, were driven into one district. 
 Within those narrow bounds multitudes of 
 them died of hunger, of bad air, while those 
 who ventured outside, were relentlessly seiz- 
 ed and torn to pieces, the Roman Governor, 
 Flaccus, making no effort to check the mas- 
 sacre. 
 
 Fearful details of death, embittered by 
 every kind of insult and torture came to the 
 Jewish community at Antioch. 
 
 To the early Christians, persecution, shame 
 and death could have seemed no signs of 
 Divine abandonment. That lesson, at least, 
 must have been stamped on every Christian 
 heart, while the Cross was still to the mass of 
 men the symbol, not of a religion, but of crime 
 ignominiously punished. 
 
 But in the mind of Onias these things re- 
 awakened many fears and suspicions. 
 
 What if, after all, the unutterable, wonder- 
 working name were no longer on their sides. 
 What if, after all, that execution on Calvary 
 had been a crime, (and if a crime, there could 
 be no doubt of its enormity,) and the silence 
 20
 
 458 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of heaven had only been the slow gathering 
 of the thunders, and this were the first burst 
 of the avenging lightning ? 
 
 Yet, he persuaded himself, there might be 
 another explanation. These Alexandrian Jews 
 were, for the most part, Hellenists. 
 
 They had translated the sacred Scriptures, 
 thus obviously casting pearls before swine. 
 They had even endeavored, it was said, to 
 extract by allegorizing and double meanings 
 a mystical philosophy, half Greek, half Orien- 
 tal, from the Law and the Prophets. Might 
 it not be possible that the wrath which had 
 fallen on these Hellenists was for their special 
 Hellenistic sins? that because they had got 
 up the stumbling-block of Grecian philosophy 
 in their hearts it was permitted that the 
 heathen rabble should set up heathen idols in 
 their synagogues and houses of prayer ? 
 
 This refuge did not suffice to shelter him 
 long. 
 
 The storm drew nearer. 
 
 The decree went forth from Cassar Caligula 
 that a colossal statue of himself should be 
 made for the purpose of being enshrined in 
 the Holy of Holies of the Temple at Jerusa- 
 lem. 
 
 The menace around the Syrian Jews, not to 
 rebellion, but to something deeper. The in- 
 most heart of that old Hebrew patriotism, al-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 459 
 
 ways more fervent and indestructible than 
 any other, was touched. 
 
 The whole nation was stirred with some- 
 thing 1 of the spirit which moved the three 
 children who chose the furnace rather than 
 idolatry. 
 
 Clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on their 
 heads, they gathered in troops, from all quar- 
 ters, around the Roman Governor, Petronius, 
 at Ptolemais. 
 
 The command of the Emperor was uncon- 
 ditional. Two legions, usually stationed on 
 the Euphrates were, if necessary, to be con- 
 centrated on Judcea to enforce the violation 
 of the Jewish Temple. The resistance of the 
 whole nation was not to be suffered to prevent 
 it 
 
 But Petronius dared to deliberate. Unlike 
 that former Procurator of Judaea whose fear 
 of offending Csesar had not saved him, 
 from banishment ere this to Gaul, to the 
 people he presented a firm front, whilst in 
 private he held a council and debated earnest- 
 ly how to avert the collision. 
 
 To the Jews, gathered before him in mourn- 
 ing garments, an immense crowd of men, 
 women, and children, he vouchsafed no words, 
 save those of the sternest rebuke : " We must 
 obey the Emperor, and they must obey him." 
 They replied that, " They, must obey God
 
 460 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 rather than Caesar ; that they would all die 
 rather than suffer the Holy Place of their God 
 to be thus desecrated." 
 
 The worship of Caligula created no enthu- 
 siasm to oppose to a religious and patriotic 
 fervor genuine as this. Petronius was hu- 
 mane. He left his troops at Ptolemais, and 
 repaired to Tiberias to see if this passion of 
 resistance was really universal among the 
 people. 
 
 * -x- * -K * 
 
 One evening Esther was returning from the 
 home of Hilda and Callius, among the gar- 
 dens, to her own in the city. Diodora was 
 with her. 
 
 The gardens of Ephidaphne were glorious 
 then with spring flowers, and they brought 
 home branches of blossom. 
 
 It was the first day of the week, and their 
 hearts had been gladdened by some fresh de- 
 tails of the life over which they knew Death 
 had no dominion. Unutterably full of inter- 
 est must those gatherings have been, where 
 the sermons were the text on which Christen- 
 dom has lived for centuries, where the Gos- 
 pels were written on the hearts of those earli- 
 est Christians before they had been embodied 
 in any manuscript. 
 
 They had met together also at that Sacred 
 Table where Christ is evermore the Master
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 461 
 
 of the Feast ; not in memorial only but in liv- 
 ing Presence. 
 
 Something of the calm, deep joy which pos- 
 sessed her that evening must have shone on 
 the pale features of Esther ; for as she passed 
 along the great colonnade which traversed 
 the city, many, among the groups of idlers, 
 paused in their conversation and turned to 
 look at her with a kind of surprise, blended in 
 some with pity and in others with contempt. 
 
 She was well known in the city. Her good 
 works and alms deeds could not remain alto- 
 gether hidden, extending as they did far be- 
 yond the limits of the Synagogue ; and her 
 husband had the perilous reputation of being 
 one of the wealthiest Jewish brokers in the 
 place. For the most part those glances were 
 far from friendly. 
 
 A bitter envy was always ready to overflow 
 against a race which was so successful and so 
 exclusive, so rich and so "morose," so hard to 
 borrow from, and yet so necessary to those 
 who wanted to borrow. 
 
 " Cloelia, what has happened?" Esther whis- 
 pered at length, laying a trembling hand on 
 the arm of the Roman maiden. " See how an- 
 grily they gaze at us." 
 
 The crippled Diodora was too much accus- 
 tomed to be a butt of the wit of Antioch to 
 have noticed any thing immoral.
 
 462 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " I never let myself see that mocking stare," 
 she said. And very quietly she added, " I 
 used to feel it so bitterly. But not now. I 
 think of the mocking stare of the multitude 
 He bore for us." 
 
 But soon insolent words came in explana- 
 tion of the contemptuous looks. 
 
 " A strange occasion for a Jewish matron 
 to choose for parading the streets with gar- 
 lands and smiles!" 
 
 " Ah ! probably she is of that new sect of 
 theirs, to which the nation is nothing, their 
 crucified Christ every thing ! 
 
 " Still, Caius Caesar enshrined in their Tem- 
 ple might try the patience even of a Chris- 
 tian." 
 
 Esther stopped, and fearlessly turning to 
 the man who had spoken these words, said, 
 " What news has arrived ? Of what ill-tidings 
 do you speak !" 
 
 " Only of the decree of Cassar Caligula 
 commanding an image of himself to be en- 
 shrined in the Temple of the Jews at Jerusa- 
 lem, and the report that the whole nation are 
 thronging round Petronius the governor, de- 
 claring they will die rather than suffer it." 
 
 Esther said no more. With the certainty 
 of peril to her people, her courage had re- 
 turned. 
 
 She entered the house pale, indeed, but
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 463 
 
 with no sign of agitation in voice or bear- 
 ing. 
 
 Onias was there before her. She found him 
 in the little inner chamber opening on the 
 court, crouching on the ground like a fright- 
 ened animal, his hands clasped on his knees 
 and his face buried between them. 
 
 She knelt beside him, bowing her head as 
 low as his. 
 
 " Onias, my husband !" she said, " I know 
 all. We will go together and entreat for 
 the children of our people. We will go to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " You will go?" he exclaimed. 
 
 He had half feared, half hoped she would 
 scarcely have heeded the tidings, no longer 
 identifying herself with the nation which had 
 committed what she regarded as an unequal- 
 led crime, and which now seemed falling un- 
 der such unequalled vengeance. 
 
 " We will go !" she replied, meeting his 
 wavering eyes until they began to kindle with 
 something of the light in hers. " This is work 
 for women, for children, for every creature of 
 our name and blood. Women can at least 
 entreat, and babes can kneel ; and if needful, 
 women as well as men can die." 
 
 "Esther!" he said, "I had thought, you 
 would look on this as inevitable, as the just 
 consequence of that Death !"
 
 464 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " That Death was voluntary, to the last dy- 
 ing cry," she said. " He offered Himself up 
 without spot to God for us. He died rather 
 than deny Himself to be what He is. If it is 
 to be, we also will let our death be voluntary. 
 We will die rather than deny our God." 
 
 " But to you, Gentiles, Greeks, barbarians 
 are brothers," he said. " Is your heart indeed 
 Jewish still ? I always feared you might die 
 for being a Christian. Would you also die 
 for being a Jewess?" 
 
 " I would die if God called me, and strength- 
 ened me," she said, in a low voice, " rather 
 than do any thing or suffer any thing to be 
 done which He has forbidden. Was not the 
 Christ, our Lord, sent first to the lost sheep 
 of the house of Israel ? Did He not drive the 
 traffickers out of the Temple ? And shall we, 
 if we can hinder it, suffer a base idol to be set 
 up in its inmost sanctuary ?" 
 
 He rose from the ground, and, raising her, 
 took her hands and looked with intense ear- 
 nestness into her face. 
 
 " But what if this is the vengeance for the 
 Cross?" he said in a hollow voice. 
 
 " If it be," she said calmly, " all the more 
 would I go, and pray for my people, and suf- 
 fer with them. To me," she added, "no blow 
 from His hand would be unwelcome. And 
 who knows but they might even yet repent.
 
 'VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 465 
 
 I know well that where He menaces, it is but 
 a stronger form of entreaty to drive those 
 who will not be won, home to Himself." 
 
 The old man bowed his head on his breast. 
 
 " I at least," he murmured, " have deserved 
 any stroke from His hand ;" and, after a pause, 
 " We will go," he said. And in saying those 
 words, he met her eyes with a look, straight 
 and untroubled, such as she had not seen on 
 his face for many a year. 
 
 He did not allude to the great sacrifices he 
 might have to make. He had risen, for the 
 time, to another level, from which they looked 
 not great, but nothing. 
 
 Hastily they made arrangements for the 
 journey. The next morning Esther was some- 
 what troubled to see him enter the treasure- 
 chamber from which he so often came with a 
 countenance careworn and perplexed. 
 
 But this time, after. some minutes, he came 
 out of the door again, with a look of quiet 
 determination far more reassuring to her than 
 the most triumphant smile. 
 
 " I have only been labelling the pledged 
 property to be restored to the owners," he 
 said, " if we do not come back again. Per- 
 haps some of it, if we do." 
 
 Once more the old love sprang up from be- 
 neath the load of care and covetousness which 
 had so long crushed it down. And it was 
 20*
 
 466 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 with a heart lightened of its heaviest care that 
 Esther accomplished that solemn journey to 
 Tiberias. 
 
 They said little by the way. 
 
 It was a strange sight that met their eyes 
 as they approached the edge of the deep ba- 
 sin of the Sea of Galilee. 
 
 It was the sowing season. But all along 
 the slopes and levels of those fertile shores 
 not a laborer was to be seen. They urged 
 their mules through a silent land ; and when 
 they came to the brow of the hill above Tibe- 
 rias, below, bordering the shore, and girding 
 the city round was gathered a dense dark 
 mass of human beings. 
 
 " As sheep having no shepherd !" Esther ex- 
 claimed in a broken voice. " They prayed 
 the Good Shepherd to depart out of their 
 coasts. And He has gone." 
 
 She would not ride further. Onias also dis- 
 mounted, and covering themselves with sack- 
 cloth, they walked slowly down the steep to 
 join the suppliant crowd of their compa- 
 triots. 
 
 Different indeed was this dark-robed, silent 
 crowd from the loitering, expectant throng 
 which a few years before had gathered on 
 those shores. 
 
 No rich tints or picturesque forms of Ori- 
 ental costume varied the sombre uniformity.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 467 
 
 All were clothed in sackcloth. Many had 
 ashes strewn on their heads. 
 
 Men of all ages and ranks, women and little 
 children, all subdued into one voiceless com- 
 pany of suppliants. 
 
 There was no wailing or clamor. The only 
 eloquence they attempted was that of silence. 
 
 They would not return to their homes, or 
 their fields ; they would not till nor sow the 
 ground, nor seek the shelter of a roof, until 
 they were assured that the Temple of their 
 God should not be desecrated. 
 
 For many days this voiceless- petition had 
 been presented before the governor, remain- 
 ing perplexed and uncertain within the walls 
 of the City of 'Tiberias. 
 
 When Esther and Onias reached this mul- 
 titude of their people, many faces already 
 looked worn with watching. 
 
 Silently they took their places in the crowd. 
 
 Day after day the thousands assembled 
 there remained, their numbers slowly increas- 
 ing, and none departing. 
 
 It was an unusually sultry season, even for 
 that sultry hollow of the lake, with its tropical 
 heat and fertility. 
 
 All day they were exposed to the sun, 
 shining in his strength, from the first moment 
 of his breaking forth like a giant from the 
 screen of the eastern hills, to the last, when
 
 468 VICTORY OF TEE VANQUISHED. 
 
 he disappeared behind the green Mount of the 
 Beatitudes. 
 
 The night scarcely cooled the air, or the 
 hot earth, ere the dawn began to burn again 
 across the lake. 
 
 The only changes in that weary anxious 
 watching were when the rulers came back 
 with reports of failure, from the presence of 
 Petronius. 
 
 He had, he said, but to obey. The statue 
 was already in the hands of Sidonian carvers, 
 at Ptolemais. Day by day, whilst they were 
 waiting there, the shapeless marble was 
 growing into the image of Csesar. Would 
 they fight against Cassar ? 
 
 The rulers of the Jews replied, " they had 
 no thought of fighting ; but they would all 
 be massacred rather than break their law." 
 
 And prostrate on the ground, with expres- 
 sive Oriental gesture, they offered their necks 
 to the sword. The Roman soldiers might 
 slay them, unresisting, one by one. The 
 power of Rome was invincible. But no 
 power on earth could compel them to live, 
 and see the Temple of their God, made the 
 temple of an idol. 
 
 For forty days this passive pleading contin- 
 ued. 
 
 Strange and awful days and nights to Es- 
 ther. Did none beside herself, in that suppli-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 469 
 
 ant crowd, see any strange significance in all 
 this, any strange contrast ? 
 
 Were there none there who had felt the 
 healing touches, heard the matchless teach- 
 ing? Were there none who had listened to 
 the Beatitudes ? Were there none who had 
 listened to the Woes ? " Woe unto thee Chora- 
 zin ! Woe unto thee Bethsaida /" To her the 
 whole silence seemed full of that Woe, so en- 
 treating, so reluctant, so sure ! 
 
 Were there none who thought of that long 
 night of silence, of the holy Sufferer buffeted 
 to and fro among Roman soldiers, and Jewish 
 priests, and brought at last before another 
 Roman Governor, less compassionate and just 
 than this Petronius, with no voice among the 
 thousands he had helped and healed raised to 
 plead for him ? 
 
 To Esther it seemed as if her whole nation 
 stood now, silent and sentenced, in the place 
 to which they had betrayed their King. 
 
 Were there none there who thought how 
 their Holy City had been desecrated with a 
 desecration beside which even this threatened 
 pollution of the Sanctuary was but as a mo- 
 mentary ceremonial defilement of its outer- 
 most Court? 
 
 Were there none who knew how the Son, 
 the Beloved of God had been rejected, the 
 Sanctuary of His sacred life violated and
 
 470 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 desecrated, the very express Image of the 
 Father dishonored ? 
 
 She prostrated herself on the ground, won- 
 dered and wept. 
 
 Yet not altogether bitter or hopeless tears. 
 
 Could it be that her people were awaking 
 at last, and not even yet, too late ? 
 
 The long suffering they had wearied was so 
 unconquerable ; the love they had despised 
 so infinite. And always, she thought, in that 
 day of inhuman ingratitude as in this day of 
 heroic patriotism, then as now, now as then, 
 these multitudes, with their ignorance, their 
 blind anger, and their blind trust, " know so 
 little what they do." 
 
 " Father ! forgive tliem" 
 
 As she wept and prayed, the echo of the 
 " Woe ! " seemed to fall fainter, until the si- 
 lence grew full of those later words of un- 
 quenchable pity. 
 
 " Father, forgive them ! For they know not 
 what they do" * 
 
 At last the relief came. 
 
 Petronius assembled the people to hear his 
 decision. 
 
 He was risking everything for himself, by 
 delaying the execution of the edict. He knew 
 it and they knew it. But he was determined 
 to take the risk, rather than lay waste the 
 Province he had been sent to govern.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 47! 
 
 He promised to do his utmost to obtain the 
 repeal of the decree. Meantime the Sidonian 
 carvers should be stopped in their work. The 
 statue should be left unfinished. 
 
 And before the answer could arrive from 
 Rome, the Emperor himself had fallen pierced 
 with many wounds from the hands of assas- 
 sins ; the body from which was modelled the 
 image which was to have desecrated the 
 Jewish Temple was cast into a dishonored 
 grave. 
 
 As Petronius ended his merciful speech to 
 the Jewish suppliants at Tiberias, the shadow 
 of clouds not felt for weeks began to soften 
 the sultry pitiless glare. And before the day 
 closed, on all the burnt-up slopes and parched 
 plains came down refreshing showers of rain. 
 
 Quietly, with glad hearts, the crowds dis- 
 persed to vineyard, orchard and corn-field. 
 
 Once more, they thought, the God of their 
 fathers had appeared for them. Once more, 
 as much his direct gift, as if smitten from the 
 rock, He sent them the living waters. 
 
 " Once more," Esther thought, " He had 
 caused His sun to shine on the evil and the 
 good, and sent His rain on the just and the 
 unjust." 
 
 With some anxiety as to the effect of this
 
 472 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 deliverance on Onias, she recommenced the 
 homeward journey. 
 
 Would he regard this rescue as- but another 
 proof of prosperity being the " sign from 
 heaven," and be led, once more, to deny the 
 Messiahship of Him whose life had ended, to 
 the eyes of His people, in defeat and death ? 
 
 She need not have feared. 
 
 The cutting off of the right hand which it 
 had been to him to abandon all his treasures, 
 and place himself as a beggar among the sup- 
 pliant crowds of his people, had raised him 
 to an altogether higher level. The one single- 
 hearted act had cleared the dim and troubled 
 eyes.. And he saw things as they are. 
 
 " Once more he has been patient and long- 
 suffering with us," she said softly as they 
 mounted the slopes from the lake. 
 
 " Patient and long-suffering indeed with me, 
 my beloved," he replied. " I have found Him 
 at last. All through those weary days and 
 nights I heard a voice, saying, in the words 
 you told me He spoke once to one who for- 
 sook him because he had great possessions," 
 ' Come, leave all, and follow me.' All these 
 silent days and nights I have been seeking 
 Him. And now at last I have found Him. 
 I have found the Christ. And I find, that to 
 leave all for Him is to leave nothing but care 
 and chains and a prison-house."
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 NCE more on the way to Rome, to 
 the Center of the world, the source 
 of law and government, of wonder- 
 ful order and of disorders, crimes 
 and corruptions unutterable, with the sacred 
 wood, the Tree of Life in their keeping to 
 cast into the bitter fountains. 
 
 Not outwardly did the early Christians bear 
 the symbol of the Cross, not even on their 
 sepulchres. The power of it was' on their 
 hearts. The symbol was visibly before them 
 too often, and too complete ; the symbol not 
 of victory, but of the utmost humiliation and 
 defeat a human life could reach, such as the 
 guillotine or the gallows would but feebly 
 represent to us. 
 
 Not in bronze and marble and the pathos 
 of religious sculpture ; in its own unmitigated 
 horror and ignominy, with the writhing of 
 tortured human limbs, it met the eyes of the 
 
 (473) '
 
 474 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 little Christian company as they returned 
 from Antioch to Rome. 
 
 Siward and his mother were once more 
 slowly passing along the Appian way, one 
 evening in spring, when once more on the 
 brow of an opposite hill as before, on their 
 journey eastward with Germanicus, the ter- 
 rible thing rose black before them against the 
 golden sky. 
 
 Once more their eyes met, and each became 
 conscious that the other had seen it. 
 
 They drew closer, and spoke of that evening 
 long ago. 
 
 "It was before me then," Siward said, "as 
 the most terrible possibility of slavery." 
 
 " It is before our hearts always now," Si- 
 guna said, "as the measure of His love for 
 us." 
 
 " And as the measure of the sacrifice which 
 may be involved in ours for Him," he replied. 
 
 He meant quite literally ; but he spoke the 
 words in a tone which made them sound like 
 a song of triumph. 
 
 The world as far as it concerned itself with 
 them at all, knew well that their Master had 
 been crucified, and had been buried. His 
 cross had been visible enough. From morn- 
 ing to night it had- stood close to one of the 
 stateliest cities of the Empire, the Jerusalem 
 of Herod the Great.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 475 
 
 The Gospel the early disciples had to tell 
 was that His sepulchre was empty, that He 
 had risen. 
 
 Their message was the Resurrection. 
 
 Their life was the Cross. A continual pa-" 
 tience with all, a perpetual sacrifice of all for 
 His sake, a perpetual victory through appa- 
 rent defeat, a triumphing through suffering. 
 In the martyr ages while the cup of her Lord 
 was continually in her hand, the raiment of 
 the Church was the white and glistening robe 
 of joy. The world provided her with the 
 Cross, and the Crucified with the crown. 
 
 When the world provides the crowns, the 
 Master can give the Cross. 
 
 For in this world the Cross may not be ab- 
 sent, though the crowning very well may, and 
 the true crowning must, through all the ages.
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 NCE more in the Pomoerium, in the 
 desert in the heart of the City, in 
 the sacred waste. 
 
 Once more Clcelia Diodora knelt 
 on the ground at night by the Tomb of the 
 Vestal. 
 
 The memories of the lonely days and nights 
 spent there, were present with her again ; the 
 memory of the restless searching hither and 
 thither for some voice to tell her of her dead, 
 for some gate into that dark Under-world. 
 What had changed to her since then ? 
 She remembered now with a kind of tri- 
 umph in the midst of her anguish she had 
 looked on palace and temple, and on all the 
 pomp of life in the city, and had thought 
 
 " Not Tiberius Caesar, but Death is the Uni- 
 versal Lord. That which has triumphed over 
 my Beloved, will lay low and triumph over 
 all, beautiful women, strong men, soldiers, 
 (476)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 477 
 
 senators, Emperor. Whatever seems, Death 
 alone reigns. 
 
 What had changed since then, that every- 
 thing was changed to her? 
 
 To the senses, nothing. The sacred urn on 
 that tomb still actually held what was dear- 
 est to her of all visible things on earth. And 
 it held only ashes. 
 
 What then had changed? To herself, to 
 her spirit, everything. 
 
 Death, to the senses, still conquered all. 
 But Life, she knew, had conquered Death. 
 
 Not Caesar, not any dark power of the Un- 
 der-world, not Death, was Universal Lord, 
 but Christ, Christ seen in the quiet morning 
 by the lake, in the quiet evening by the table, 
 blessing the bread. 
 
 To Him "all power was given in heaven 
 and earth." Lord everywhere, and forever. 
 It was impossible to be exiled from His do- 
 minion. Death only brought nearer Him ; one 
 stage nearer, from the Provinces to the Mother 
 City, from the School to the Father's House. 
 
 That was all she had learned of the Unseen 
 World. But it was enough. 
 
 He ivas there ; reigning there. There was 
 no need of any other light to make that world 
 bright, but the light awful, mysterious, sweet, 
 familiar, which His Presence, Divine and hu- 
 man must make.
 
 478 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 The words of the Apostle had not yet been 
 written to the Church at Rome. \ 
 
 " Glory and honor and peace to every man 
 that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also 
 to the Gentile ; for there is no respect of per- 
 sons with God. For when the Gentiles which 
 have not the law do by nature the things 
 contained in the law, these having not the 
 law are a law unto themselves, which show 
 the works of the law written in their hearts, 
 their conscience also bearing witness." 
 
 But no perplexity had disturbed her heart 
 with regard to her lost Beloved. Christ the 
 Lord had not begun to live at Bethlehem, nor 
 to reign at Jerusalem. He had been living 
 and reigning with the Father, from the begin- 
 ning. He was living and reigning now, over 
 all things, visible and invisible. That was 
 enough. 
 
 All the heart's yearnings for justice and for 
 pity, were satisfied absolutely in the certainty 
 that he was satisfied, and that He was Lord. 
 
 All barriers were broken down in Him, the 
 atoning sacrifice, the mediating Lord ; all bar- 
 riers between man and man ; between man 
 and God ; between earth and heaven. 
 
 No barriers of race could destroy the unity 
 of the humanity He had deigned to take, not 
 as a mutable vesture, but as another nature. 
 No barriers of past sin would divide the most
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 479 
 
 sinful who believed in Him from God and 
 from purity. No impenetrable brazen gates 
 of Hades, even, could separate really the dead 
 and the living, since the Seen and the Unseen 
 were alike His kingdom. 
 
 Where any wall of partition had stood, He 
 stood" and said, 
 
 " / am the door" 
 
 Where the gates of exclusion stood, He 
 stands, with the compassionate countenance 
 to welcome, and the irresistible pierced hands, 
 to bless, and to invite. 
 
 She knelt in the solitude, feeling something 
 of the expansion and the comprehension, the 
 light and the freedom of His presence, and 
 we'pt soft healing tears such as she had never 
 wept there before. Across the waves, through 
 the storm the words had come to her 
 
 " It is I. Be not afraid." 
 
 No more. But absolutely enough. For to 
 her, His " It is I," meant the assurance in His 
 voice Who saw, and commanded, all ages and 
 all worlds, that all is well. 
 
 As she rose from the ground, a little way 
 off, she perceived old Laon, leaning against a 
 black olive-trunk. 
 
 " You came to take care of me," she said. 
 " You knew where to find me, best and oldest 
 friend."
 
 480 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 " Scarcely best now," he said, in rather a 
 thick voice ; " you have entered on a world 
 of brothers and sisters, now." 
 
 " Laon," she said, " are not you even you, 
 also one of these ?" 
 
 He did not answer for some moments. 
 Then he said, 
 
 " You have heard no voice, seen no vision. 
 Yet the world is changed to you. And this is 
 changed to you, which was all in the world 
 you cared for. Is it indeed true that you be- 
 lieve One has risen from the dead, has been 
 where she whom you love is, has come back 
 and has told you nothing whatever about that 
 unknown world save that He is there, and that 
 nevertheless you are satisfied ?" 
 
 " It is true," she said. " I cannot find that 
 He has told anything but that He is there, 
 and that He will welcome each of us thither, 
 and that we shall be with Him there, at once, 
 without interval. And with this we are satis- 
 fied." 
 
 " If what you believe is true," Laon replied, 
 " think what He might have told you. For 
 He must be as familiar with that world as 
 with this. He must surely know how human 
 hearts long for tidings of it. He might, for 
 instance, have told you where they live. 
 Would it not have been something to know 
 that if you turn your eyes to some one spot in
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 481 
 
 the heavens, you are looking towards the bor- 
 ders of their dwelling?" 
 
 " It seems to us that it would have been 
 worth something," she said. 
 
 " Would it not have been worth something," 
 he continued, " to know fully what they know 
 of us, to have one positive declaration that 
 they are with us, that they are watching over 
 us, rejoicing when we do right, caring for 
 us?" 
 
 " I believe they do," she said. " Are they 
 not with Him Who gave us to each other, 
 and Who cares for us more than any." 
 
 " You trust, you think, you infer," Laon 
 replied. " But, if you are right, He knew. 
 One positive word from His lips would have 
 been wor-th much to you." 
 
 "It would," she said. "But He has not 
 given it, and He knew best. Perhaps," she 
 added, " He saw it would make us stronger 
 and happier in the end to rest, not on the 
 things He could have told us, but on His 
 love ; better for us to all eternity to have 
 known what it is in the face of darkness, and 
 anguish, and silence, even His silence, to 
 trust Himself." 
 
 " Would it not have been something," Laon 
 
 resumed, " to know how they live ? what their 
 
 employments are, how they are influenced by 
 
 this visible world, or can influence it? this 
 
 21
 
 482 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 visible world which is still so much to us ! 
 If that pure Being you love had been exiled 
 to Pandataria, would you not have spent all 
 your living to get tidings of her, just to know 
 in what kind of a dwelling she abode, what 
 she did at any hour of any day ? That world 
 must have been as familiar to Him you trust, 
 if your trust is well placed, as your father's 
 home on the Ccelian to you and your sister ? 
 Has He told you nothing ?" 
 
 " He called it Paradise ; the garden of spi- 
 rits; the garden of all the worlds," she said. 
 " That is something, but what the keeping 
 and tilling of that garden mean, He has not 
 said. He called it His Father's House and 
 that is more. It must mean a Temple and a 
 Home. But what the services of that Temple 
 are, what that Home life is, He has not told. 
 But we know what He delighted to do here, 
 on earth," she added, " and we know they are 
 with Him, that they must delight to do what 
 He delighted in, and must be able to do it, 
 being strong, as He is now, not in weakness 
 of flesh as He was, and we are. Indeed, 
 Laon," she concluded, " we are content. And 
 we have reason. Perhaps He told us all it is 
 good for us to know. Perhaps He told us all 
 it is possible for us to know. Which of the 
 two we know not. But one of the two it must 
 be, knowing our hearts as He knows them,
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 483 
 
 and being what He is. Meantime we are 
 waiting for the opening of the door. Won- 
 derful, happy secrets are behind for us to 
 learn, we know ; for He is love ; and not one 
 dark secret, for in Him is no darkness at all ; 
 and while we wait, we have always one way 
 of learning more and more of them, and that 
 is by learning more and more of Him. Every 
 fresh detail we gather concerning Him of His 
 life here, His words, His dying, His life now, 
 gives us a glimpse into their lives whose joy 
 is in Him. Every fresh revelation of His love 
 and truth is a fresh revelation of their bliss. 
 Every prayer to Him draws us near them. 
 Every act of service to Him associates us 
 with them. For they are with Him beyond 
 the night ; and He is with us day and night. 
 And indeed we are satisfied. Have we not 
 reason ?" 
 
 " I think you have reason, Clcelia Diodora, 
 my God-given," he said after a pause. " Many 
 have been persuaded, you say, by His words. 
 I am convinced by His silence."
 
 ^CHAPTER XLL 
 
 NITED in one Family, the little com- 
 pany still retained their individual 
 characters and aims, or rather their 
 various ways of carrying out the 
 one great inspiring purpose which is the in- 
 spiration of every Christian life. 
 
 All barriers were broken down ; but n<i 
 characteristics. 
 
 To Clcelia Diodora the words of the Vestal 
 that morning in the old garden on the Ccelian 
 often came back, like a hymn. 
 
 " Rejoice with me," she had said. " To- 
 day I began the sacred priesthood, the charge 
 of the sacred fire. To-day my life flows forth 
 from the shadow of the rock-arches to serve 
 our Rome." 
 
 The whole Church seemed to Diodora the 
 fulfilment of that air type ; a Vestal Priestess, 
 clothed in the pure white stole, every morn- 
 ing drawing the living water from the Foun- 
 (484)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 485 
 
 tain for the Shrine ; day and night keeping 
 the Sacred Fire burning, not only for Rome, 
 but for the world. 
 
 The whole redeemed Church on earth and 
 in heaven, and every member of it. 
 
 Even to her her portion of the sacred 
 charge was given. The charge of Laon's 
 little home, the brightening of his failing life, 
 the bearing of his little irritabilities, the 
 watching his every wish. And in that cor- 
 rupt and suffering city, so full of sins and 
 wrongs and pain, there was no lack of wider 
 ministries. 
 
 The whole work of the Church lay before 
 her. Slavery was in the world, slavery with 
 its possibilities of crucifixion, with its certain- 
 ties of degradation. The gladiatorial games 
 were there ; and the Empire which provided 
 them, and the people who delighted in them 
 were there. 
 
 All these mountains of wrong had to be 
 overthrown, and every one of them had to be 
 overthrown by no earthquake, by no volcanic 
 outburst, by no thunderbolt of Divine ven- 
 geance, but from within, slowly, impercep- 
 tibly, by the living waters cleansing, and the 
 sacred fire enkindling heart after heart. 
 
 Slowly, imperceptibly, yet by no quiet, in- 
 evitable diffusion of an atmosphere, by a rev- 
 olution in heart after heart wrought by a
 
 4 86 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 power far mightier than any which convulsed 
 the visible world, by unflinching loyalty, 
 and unconquerable courage, and unquench- 
 able love, by the willing sacrifice of life after 
 life, in ministrations of charity, and in deaths 
 of anguish. 
 
 Victory, sure and steady, but always 
 through the vanquished. Victory, not by 
 the lightnings, but by the Cross. 
 
 To Callias, the young Athenian sculptor, 
 the difficulty of uniting the new loyalty with 
 the old habits of life, seemed at first the 
 greatest. 
 
 Laon and Siward still worked on at the ar- 
 morer's workshop in the Suburra. We do not 
 hear that the Centurion of those days left his 
 calling as a calling. The arms of the Roman 
 soldiers, if often used in the destruction of 
 national life, were yet in general employed in 
 the support of law and order. 
 
 With Siward the old desire for the libera- 
 tion of his Germans was not yet quenched. 
 Understanding now what liberation meant, un- 
 derstanding that no one can be set truly free 
 except from within, and knowing how this 
 emancipation was effected, more fervently 
 than ever he purposed, one day to return 
 among his people and bear to them the sum- 
 mons to the service which is perfect free- 
 dom.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 487 
 
 But he had much to learn ere he could 
 teach ; nor could he preach until he was 
 sent. 
 
 Meantime he learned continually by work- 
 ing, by listening, by praying, and he felt as in 
 the old days, that each day's work was a 
 preparation for a better. How much better 
 he had not known then. How much better 
 he did not yet know. 
 
 But to Callias the perplexing questions 
 which beset the early Christians presented 
 themselves for immediate decision ; how to 
 reconcile the beauty of the Pagan sculpture 
 with its desecrations, how to disentangle the 
 Beauty from the Idolatry and the Vice which 
 entwined their rank, poisonous growth round 
 every portion of it. 
 
 The early Church, we know, had an im- 
 perial fearlessness of evil. Into the very 
 shrines of the corrupt rites she entered in her 
 Vestal Stole, and claimed therein whatever 
 was good and beautiful and true as belonging 
 to her Lord. 
 
 In the form of Orpheus, for instance, shep- 
 herding the sheep with his lyre, she saw the 
 Good Shepherd of all the Flocks of God, in 
 heaven and earth, Beautiful and True and 
 Good, and fearlessly delineated the symbol of 
 Orpheus on her sacred sepulchres. 
 
 Too full of faith and love was she in those
 
 4 88 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 first days to know fear. With no apologetic 
 concessions, but with Imperial claims to Uni- 
 versal Empire, she came forth into the world. 
 While she dared the Cross and the Wild 
 Beasts in the Arena, and the Plague, she dared 
 also as fearlessly the worse perils of moral 
 pestilence, entering any lazar-house to rescue 
 thence whatever could be rescued. 
 
 Still, diseased and ghastly as the life was, 
 heathenism was yet living ; and it was not 
 possible for the Christian sculptor to carve 
 Apollos or Venuses for Temples where in any 
 sense they were still worshiped. Nor was 
 it possible for Apollos and Venuses to be re- 
 ceived into Christian households, as harmless 
 decorations, fair relics of a religion passed 
 away. Christianity was a religion primarily 
 in the sense of its being not an opinion, but a 
 loyalty. And perpetually, practical questions 
 would arise, which involved a decision be- 
 tween a Pretender and the King. 
 
 Pagan religion was not yet dead, and there- 
 fore Christian Art was not yet possible. 
 
 Moreover the world had to be conquered ; 
 every Christian was a soldier, and soldiers in 
 such a campaign had little time for Art. 
 
 Callias, therefore, abandoned for the pres- 
 ent the sculpture of the human form, and lim- 
 ited himself to making such things as were 
 needed for the homes of men ; cups and flag-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 489 
 
 ons, and urns, as beautiful as he could make 
 them. 
 
 On Callias and Hilda, more than on any of 
 the little company around them, Christianity 
 brought an apparent loss. 
 
 To Siward longing for the freedom of his 
 Germans ; to Clcelia disguised and imprisoned 
 in her poor crippled frame, and bereaved of 
 her dearest, to Laon on the verge of the other 
 life, to Siguna, with but one longing left in 
 this, it was altogether Gospel, altogether 
 gain, with no present loss, whatever the fu- 
 ture might demand. 
 
 But the mother and father of those fair 
 young children, came at once under the pres- 
 sure of the great burdens of the world, which 
 hitherto young and strong and buoyant as 
 they were, had scarcely touched them. They 
 became members of an Immortal Band, ap- 
 pointed to the front of the Battle. 
 
 As the mother looked on her children, un- 
 speakable as the joy was of committing them 
 for life and death to Him Who was Lord of 
 both, and had taken the little ones in his arms, 
 nevertheless, it could not banish the convic- 
 tion that in training them to be His disciples, 
 she was training them for a service in which 
 they deliberately subjected themselves to a 
 destiny as cruel as the worst infliction of 
 slavery. 
 
 21*
 
 490 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 There was no levity in Christian life in 
 those days. The holy depth of the joy for- 
 bade it, and the weight of the glory to be re- 
 vealed, but also the probability of the inter- 
 vening suffering.
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 HEN the day's work was done, Si- 
 ward might often be seen, with his 
 mother, on the quays by the Tiber, 
 at the schools of the masters of the 
 Gladiators, or at the slave-dealers, gleaning 
 any information they could about captives, or 
 foreign slaves. 
 
 Through countless bands of downcast-look- 
 ing men and women, brought from all quar- 
 ters of the Empire to the great slave-market 
 of Rome, Siguna's eyes had searched in vain 
 for Olave. 
 
 Year by year she had traced, in thought, 
 the changes time must have made in the form 
 she had seen last in the fullness of manly 
 strength. Sometimes she said to herself that 
 perhaps his countenance would be so changed, 
 and his form so bowed that she might scarcely 
 recognize him. But the voice she could never 
 fail to know ; the voice uttering her name. 
 Might not she also be so changed that even 
 
 (491)
 
 492 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 Olave might scan her features vacantly, find- 
 ing no traces of old times ? She had watched 
 herself change, looking at herself as if with his 
 eyes, and had seen the golden hair turn to 
 gray, and the furrows deepen, and the eyes 
 lose their lustre, and the cheeks their fresh- 
 ness ; and transferring the same slow work of 
 time to the face she remembered so full of 
 power and life, more and more, as the years 
 went on, the fear grew that they might possi- 
 bly meet, gaze vacantly on one another, and 
 pass by and so lose their one opportunity of 
 reunion for ever. 
 
 But the voice she felt could never change 
 so that she could fail to recognize it. Some 
 tones utterly indescribable to any besides, 
 would reveal him to her, above all, if they 
 spoke her name. And with him she was sure 
 it must be the same. 
 
 Patiently therefore she would pass through 
 every company of German captives, softly re- 
 iterating his name. 
 
 So year after year had passed, but no re- 
 sponsive look or tone had come. Still she 
 hoped on. To every one else, even to Siward, 
 the hope had come to seem a mere fond delu- 
 sion. He never failed to attend and guard 
 her, and as far as he could to assist her in her 
 search, but to him other hopes and other work 
 grew out of it.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 493 
 
 Stories of wrong and sorrow were poured 
 out into his ear. From East and West and 
 North and South the cry of the oppressed 
 came to him ; sometimes with the fruits of his 
 daily labor he would relieve the misery he 
 saw so much of; sometimes even he had been 
 able- to pay a ransom. Sometimes he had 
 been able to bring the tidings of the Life 
 given a Ransom, given for all, and of the Mas- 
 ter whose disciples could never in the deepest 
 sense be in bondage more. 
 
 Esther and Onias had remained at Antioch, 
 and the means of the little company at Rome, 
 Laon, Clcelia Diodora, Callias and Hilda, Si- 
 guna and Siward, were very scanty. But in 
 every Christian heart was erected that Altar 
 to Pity which the Pity of God never suffers 
 to fail in sacrifices, or in the heavenly fire. 
 
 At this time, at the beginning of the reign 
 of Claudius Caesar, the number of captives 
 from the North began to increase. Two gen- 
 erals, Servius Galba and Corbulo, had crossed 
 the Rhine once more, and recommenced the 
 conquest of the Germans. And from the 
 Chatti and Chauci, and other tribes in the 
 country between the Rhine and the Elbe 
 the native land of Siguna and Olave fair- 
 haired men and women, and aged people and 
 little children began to arrive. 
 
 They came along the Flaminian Way. And
 
 494 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 evening after evening the mother and son 
 used to go forth along that Great Northern 
 Road to watch these captive bands of their 
 compatriots, dragged or driven along the 
 road by which, so many years before, they 
 themselves had been led to Rome. 
 
 At length, in May, it was reported that 
 there had been a successful invasion, and that 
 an unusual number of captives were expected. 
 Siguna persuaded Siward to start early in the 
 morning and go a day's journey from the 
 City, so as to be more secure of not missing 
 any who might arrive. 
 
 Before evening they reached a slope beyond 
 the undulating plane of the Campagna, which 
 seemed to Siward familiar as if he had visited 
 it in a dream. Siguna was wearied, and they 
 sat down to rest a few moments before they 
 climbed higher. As they rested they turned 
 their faces towards Rome. 
 
 Before, them stretched the arrowy lines of 
 the Roman Road, scaling the hills and span- 
 ning the valleys. 
 
 Slowly, as they gazed, the day dissolved 
 into dusk, the silvery glimpses of the sea be- 
 tween the openings of the hills vanished, the 
 rolling surges of the Campagna grew dim and 
 gray, the glossy bays and evergreen oaks 
 around them were massed in impenetrable 
 shade, until at last, on earth, nothing was
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 495 
 
 discernible but those arrowy lines of road, 
 stretching into the darkness ; and nothing in 
 heaven but the green and golden seas which 
 quivered between the purple bars of lower 
 cloud, or the ruby amber which jewelled the 
 tops of the sunlit clouds above. 
 
 Suddenly the full recollection of the morn- 
 ing when he had sat there with his mother 
 on their first approach to Rome, rushed on 
 Siward's mind. 
 
 " The walls of Asgard ! " he exclaimed. 
 " Mother, since we were here last, we have 
 found we have entered the Gates of the City 
 of God ! Do you remember that morning, 
 long ago, when we sat here, both slaves, 
 looking towards Rome. To me, the very 
 words we spoke, and the thoughts I could not 
 speak come back with a strange clearness. 
 ' Death,' you said, ' cannot be kept out even of 
 Asgard' And I thought, ' Is there no place 
 where wrong and death cannot come? No 
 time when Justice and Truth will rule ? No- 
 where a happy City of the good ?' Mother, 
 do you remember?" 
 
 " I remember," she replied, " you said, ' Did 
 no one know ? Then it was not worth living 
 longer, it would be better to die and know.' 
 And I said, ' Die and know what ? ' Then you 
 spoke with a protecting gentleness which made 
 me think of your father, boy as you were,
 
 496 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 and you said you had been a coward to wish 
 to die and desert me, and that for me and 
 Hilda it was well worth while to live. I re- 
 member, my son, you have well kept the 
 charge you took on yourself then." 
 
 " Think, mother !" he resumed, " how every 
 thing I longed to know, or dared to hope, has 
 been fulfilled, and yet in a way none of us 
 would have chosen, or dreamed of. Fulfilled 
 by worse than my worst fears having proved 
 true. I never told you what I saw when 1 
 left you that May morning. It was here first 
 that I saw the shadow which lowered so long 
 over our lines. It was here first that I saw 
 one dying on a Cross. And, now, the Holy 
 and the Just ; the Deliverer, such as I was 
 groping for in vain on the right hand and on 
 the left, the King, the Son of God, has 
 died on such a Cross as that. And Death it- 
 self is slain. Death itself has become the 
 Gate of the Heavenly City into which, unlike 
 Asgard, Death can never come. More even 
 than that, He Himself, the Crucified, has be- 
 come the Gate of the City of God, the City 
 of the Immortals, the City of the forgiven and 
 the loving, to be entered here on earth, with- 
 out a barrier, stretching up the heights of 
 heaven, with gates on earth, ever open to 
 men." 
 
 They did not journey farther that night.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 497 
 
 
 
 On a bed of dry leaves, wrapped, after she had 
 fallen asleep in Siward's cloak as well as her 
 own, Siguna slept the sleep of the weary. 
 
 But Siward could not sleep. Such thank- 
 fulness filled his heart, and such wide hopes 
 of a life of service for his Lord, and for his 
 people. 
 
 Those arrowy lines of road which had 
 seemed to him of old as threads of the web 
 which drew the prey to Rome, had become 
 to him as lines along which should glide the 
 sunbeams of the Good Tidings. 
 
 " And I," he thought, " even I, may be one 
 of the bearers of that light." 
 
 In the morning, early, before his mother 
 awoke, he went to buy a draught of milk from 
 a goatherd whose flocks were, scattered over 
 the slopes. 
 
 At the next turn of the road, he came on a 
 band of captives with a Roman guard. 
 
 On a bank by the roadside was sleeping an 
 old man, a little apart from the rest. His 
 white beard fell on his breast. His sleep 
 seemed uneasy ; once or twice he moaned as 
 if in pain, and then Siward saw that his bare 
 feet were wounded and blistered, and his an- 
 cles grazed with fetters. 
 
 While Siward was still looking at him com- 
 passionately, as at one of the countless suffer- 
 ers of that oppressed world, wondering what
 
 49 8 VICTOR Y OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 further miseries the few years left him on earth 
 might involve, the old man awoke. Not be- 
 wildered, altogether awake, at once, as one 
 accustomed to be on his guard against sur- 
 prises. He arose at once, and Siward saw, 
 through all the feebleness of age, and the 
 weariness of pain, the soldierly bearing, and 
 the power of endurance, and of command, in 
 the clear blue eyes. 
 
 He hazarded a few words in his native 
 German. They were answered in the same 
 dialect. 
 
 A hope flashed on him. But before he had 
 time to make inquiries, suddenly, not in 
 the timid, hesitating, anxious tones to which 
 he had become so accustomed, but with a 
 ring of recognition and joy which brought 
 back all the youth into the voice, burst on him 
 the familiar name 
 
 "Olave! Olave !" 
 
 And the answer 
 
 " Siguna ! my lost ! my wife ! mother of my 
 children !" was all but hushed in Siguna's 
 sobs of joy. 
 
 -x- * * # * 
 
 With Siward there was no doubt or hesi- 
 tation as to the duty which had fallen on him. 
 
 In the slave-market, at the gladiatorial 
 games, one human chattel was as good as an- 
 other, except for the work to be got out of
 
 VIC SORT OF THE VANQUISHED. 499 
 
 either. In this case the exchange of feeble 
 old age for vigorous manhood was one to be 
 accepted with alacrity. 
 
 No choice was left to Olave or Siguna. 
 Siward had effected the transfer of himself 
 for his father, before either he or his mother 
 knew of it. And the leader of the band of 
 captives sarcastically declined to annul it, at 
 the old man's entreaties. 
 
 Once more, therefore, Siward trod those 
 last weary miles of the Flaminian Way, a slave.
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 T was the birthday of the Emperor 
 Claudius. Lame, with a head that 
 quivered from palsy, the aversion 
 of his grandfather Augustus, the butt 
 of the courtiers, despised by his own mother 
 Antonia, Claudius the brother of Germanicus, 
 after fifty years experience of the contempt 
 with which that hard old world regarded 
 bodily infirmity, had been dragged from the 
 corner of the palace where he had crouched 
 in terror after the assassination of Caligula to 
 wield the Empire of the world. 
 
 To his honor, those years of neglect and 
 scorn do not seem to have embittered him. 
 He indulged in no act of petty vengeance. 
 He had no pleasure in seeing others suffer. 
 The only indelible evil stamped on his char- 
 acter by those long years of contumely and 
 impotence, were a destitution of self-reliance, 
 an abject timidity which palsied his power for 
 
 (500)
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 501 
 
 good, and left him the prey of wicked women, 
 and' designing courtiers. 
 
 But whether the Emperor delighted in them- 
 or not, the appetite of the Roman people for 
 the sanguinary gladiatorial games must be 
 satisfied, and the Imperial birthday must be 
 celebrated by an especial slaughter. 
 
 For many years Claudius had been forbid- 
 den to appear in the Imperial seat, at the 
 circus or amphitheatre, because his stunted 
 and slightly palsied form was thought by the 
 Imperial family to be a slur on them, a 
 blot on the Beauty and Strength by which 
 their "Divine" lineage was distinguished, a 
 Wounding of the Majesty of Cassar, in the 
 eyes of the populace. 
 
 But to-day all this was changed. The Clau- 
 dius Cassar was the Divine Dispenser of bread 
 and games, and his presence was to glorify 
 the Combat. 
 
 The crowds streamed out of Rome to the 
 Campus Martius, and filled range after range 
 of the seats of the great amphitheatre near the 
 Tiber. 
 
 It was the first of August. The glare of 
 the sun was overpowering. Many protected 
 themselves from it by what others regarded 
 as the Oriental effeminacy of umbrellas. But 
 the show was to be magnificent, and it was 
 worth enduring something to see thousands
 
 502 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of slaves and criminals, and among them hun- 
 dreds of these new German captives, who had 
 been in training since May, (stalwart men 
 most of them,) in deadly conflict with each 
 other, and afterwards with hundreds of Nu- 
 midian lions, panthers and tigers. 
 
 For after the gladiatorial fights the people 
 had been promised a grand combat with wild 
 beasts. 
 
 The quays on the Tiber had been danger- 
 ous frequently of late with the disembarkation 
 of the irritated and bewildered beasts. 
 
 And now their unquiet moanings and roar- 
 ings could be heard in the dens, beneath the 
 Amphitheatre, where they were chained, hun- 
 gry and perplexed, in readiness for the conflict. 
 
 Siward was there, not among the specta- 
 tors ; among the gladiators. Not among 
 those who were armed fully for combat with 
 each other, but clothed in the short tunic, 
 and armed only with the prong of the beast 
 combatants. Choice having been allowed 
 him, he had chosen rather to fight with the 
 wild bqasts than to make sport for a Roman 
 crowd by fighting for life with men who had 
 done him no wrong, many of them his com- 
 patriots. 
 
 It was in no solemn silence, as of a con- 
 demned cell, that the men around him were 
 awaiting their terrible lot. Many of them, in-
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 503 
 
 deed, were captives, reluctantly driven to this 
 cruel combat ; yet even some of these had en- 
 tered with zest into the training-, and looked 
 forward to the fight, not without a fierce ex- 
 citement, and not without a hope of victory 
 and escape. 
 
 But the majority, on this occasion at least, 
 were criminals,- men of the lowest and most 
 reckless character, to whom the descent into 
 the arena was rather a rise than a fall in life. 
 Or they were voluntary combatants, men 
 who willingly hired themselves, who had 
 chosen prize-fighting as their profession, and 
 were the heroes and the models of the young 
 Roman nobles, the popular subjects of endless 
 gambling, themselves content to gamble away 
 their lives for the pay and the palms, and even 
 without pay or applause, having a fierce wild 
 beast's joy in the fight. 
 
 They had all taken the terrible gladiator's 
 oath, and probably taken it with little thought. 
 
 " We swear the oath, to be burnt, van- 
 quished, beaten, slain with the sword, and 
 whatever else is commanded us, submitting 
 ourselves to our Master, as lawful gladiators 
 most religiously, body and soul." 
 
 To this Siward had added in a loud, clear 
 voice : 
 
 " With reserve to the Master to W T hom I 
 have sworn all this before."
 
 504 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 He had gone diligently through all the 
 training. He intended to sell his life dearly. 
 He had hoped to do so much with it. 
 
 And he had much hope. 
 
 Few frames more muscular or agile than 
 his were among that desperate, but well- 
 trained band. 
 
 That gathering of gladiators was no quiet 
 place in which to prepare for what might be 
 the last scene of life to him. 
 
 Oaths, and jests, and eager betting, and 
 angry debating, and loud wild laughter, and 
 the fierce boasting of those who had already sur- 
 vived many such combats, made a din around 
 him which drowned the roaring of the beasts. 
 
 He found it difficult to think or pray. 
 
 Only, as often in moments of suspense, or 
 of strong excitement, one set of words kept 
 beating through his brain, half mechanically, 
 yet now and then striking on his heart with a 
 vivid fulness of meaning. 
 
 " I swear to be burnt, vanquished, beaten, 
 slain with the sword, or whatever else is com- 
 manded, submitting ourselves to our Master 
 religiously, body and soul." 
 
 " To our Master religiously, body and soul." 
 
 The words came and went like the monot- 
 onous moaning of a wind, and beneath them 
 his heart was surging with all its freight of 
 long-cherished hopes.
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 505 
 
 It was not for such a combat he had been 
 training himself all these years. 
 
 Would he indeed perish in the Arena, un- 
 distinguished among those degraded crimi- 
 nals and men who had basely sold themselves 
 to such a life ? Perish without a word on his 
 lips, or a sign on his torn limbs, to show in 
 what Master's service he had really fallen, by 
 what Sacrament he had been bound ? Perish ; 
 and the glorious message he had hoped to 
 bear among his people perish for them with 
 him? 
 
 Still the words came back : 
 
 " Submitting ourselves to our Master re- 
 ligiously, body and soul." 
 
 They came, as of old the Master's voice 
 across the surges of Galilee, and brought a 
 great calm. 
 
 Religiously, willingly, not as a victim, as a 
 living sacrifice, redeemed body and soul, be- 
 longing body and soul to the Redeemer, he 
 would die. The life his own had rescued, 
 would, he felt sure, not be forgotten or lost 
 before God. 
 
 At length the first combats were over. The 
 signal for the wild beast fight was given. 
 
 At one gate came forth the human combat- 
 ants. At the other were driven in the raging 
 troops of bewildered beasts, bears, lions, pan- 
 thers, and among them a few peaceable giants 
 22
 
 506 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of elephants, to be irritated and maddened 
 into one undistinguishable tangle of rage and 
 pain and slaughter. 
 
 For an instant the crowd of eager and ex- 
 pectant faces on the seats of the amphitheatre 
 flashed on Siward, as the troop of combatants 
 passed before the Emperor with the 
 
 " Ave Caesar, morituri te saluant." 
 
 For one calm conscious moment he lifted 
 up his heart. 
 
 " Hail Christ, living or dying I worship 
 Thee ; " then in the words of the fatal oath, 
 " To thee Master, to Thee, body and soul." 
 
 Then the rush of the combat began. 
 
 And thenceforth he was conscious of nothing 
 but the straining of every nerve and muscle 
 in the conflict for life, until, torn and bleeding, 
 after the last death-grapple, he saw a power- 
 ful panther rolling in the dust before him, 
 heard a shout of applause ringing from all 
 sides of the crowded amphitheatre. Then all 
 sights and sounds faded into shadows and dim 
 echoes far away, and nothing remained clear. 
 
 " To Thee Master, body and soul, to Thee." 
 ****** 
 
 He woke ; not to the welcomes which 
 never die into farewells; but once more to' 
 the wistful tenderness of his mother's eyes ; 
 not to the immortal vigor of the life beyond 
 death, but to the mortal weakness of a frame
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 507 
 
 which could never again be as it had been, 
 the willing servant of the spirit. 
 
 Very slowly, by the tenderest nursing, he 
 recovered, but maimed and weakened hope- 
 lessly. 
 
 At first it seemed very hard to be thus, 
 beaten back a helpless wreck on the stormy 
 shore he seemed to have left for ever; to 
 come back thus to the old work without the 
 old power. 
 
 He had longed, and prayed, and striven 
 hard for life. The Kingdom of God had such 
 glorious conquests to make still on earth, and 
 here, on earth he had felt he might aid in 
 them. Not by passive endurance only, and 
 by feminine patience, and by martyrdom, but 
 by daring and enterprise, by the highest con- 
 tinuous strain of the energy of the bravest 
 men were the first conquests of Christianity 
 achieved. 
 
 Above also, in the higher world he knew 
 he might aid in that highest service, although 
 he knew not how, and he would like not to 
 have seen the Master until he could have 
 done a little more towards winning the " Well 
 done." He had taken the oath to suffer and to 
 die ; he had not thought it might mean rather 
 live and suffer. 
 
 Life being yielded up, he had thought of no 
 other alternative but that other life beyond,
 
 5o8 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 of the inconceivable joy of seeing the Master's 
 face, and being for ever with Him. 
 
 To die to the work of earth and yet not to 
 enter on that heavenly life, this was what he 
 had not dreamed would be laid on Him. 
 . The only thing that, at first, made the pros- 
 pect endurable to him was the welcome in his 
 mother's eyes. For her sake he felt it was 
 well. 
 
 " Thank God !" she said to him one day, 
 when his strength began to return. " Do you 
 remember the man of God in Esther's books 
 who took his only son up the hill to sacrifice 
 him, and raised the knife to slay him ? If thou 
 hadst died, my son, all my life would have 
 been like that. Day after day I should have 
 felt toiling up the hill to the altar of sacrifice, 
 and lifting up my hand to slay thee." 
 
 He was content to spare her that anguish, 
 although to him it seemed that the burden 
 had but been transferred. All his life, he 
 thought, he would be toiling up the weary 
 hill, bearing the wood of sacrifice, and having 
 no strength to bear anything else. 
 
 Yet he was content. The Master had said 
 it was the Cross His disciples should bear 
 after Him. That must mean, he knew too 
 well, as hard a thing as a man could endure. 
 Exactly this had been laid on him. It was no 
 more than he had willingly undertaken in his
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 509 
 
 baptismal promise when rising from the cold 
 tide of the Orontes' into the glory of the Sy- 
 rian dawn, baptized into Christ, he had come 
 forth into a new world, and a new life, vowed, 
 as he was altogether redeemed by Him to 
 be altogether His, to suffer combat, serve or die, 
 " to be subject to Him body and soul for ever." 
 
 It was all the harder because the life he had 
 rescued by his own, seemed so little likely to 
 be a substitute for his, and so doubtful a bless- 
 ing to its possessor. 
 
 Very seldom, at first, did the old man, 
 Olave the Smith, enter the sick chamber, and 
 when for a few moments he came and stood 
 beside his son, he would scarcely speak a 
 word, but stand helpless and dumb, with a 
 look of bewilderment and pain in his face, 
 more like the perplexed, wistful gaze of a 
 faithful dog, than that of human eyes, until 
 Siguna would gently take his hand, and dumb 
 and unresisting he would submit to be led away. 
 
 By degrees, however, he consented to watch 
 by the couch, seeming pleased like a child to 
 be allowed to be of use. He would sit and 
 mechanically brush away the flies that buzz 
 about all defenceless creatures. As he sat 
 thus Siward grew conscious of the world of 
 civilization that had been slowly growing 
 between him and the old barbarian life. 
 
 To what must the old man's thoughts be
 
 510 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 wandering back, as his eyes were fixed in that 
 sad far-away gaze ? To the old forest-life, the 
 chase, the forge, the battle-field, the carouse 
 with its monotonous yet eager talk of the 
 chase, the forge, the battle ; to the early mar- 
 ried life when his boys and girls were grow- 
 ing up around him, to a recurrence of just 
 such a life as his own, as surely, it seemed, as 
 the nestlings of this season into the songsters 
 of the next. 
 
 To old Olave the city was a mere prison, a 
 labyrinthine barrier between him and free- 
 dom. The mythologies and philosophies 
 with their aspirations after light and their 
 chasms of darkness, which had sprung from 
 the fertilizing contact of nation with nation, 
 and man with man, and which both by their 
 light and their darkness had prepared the 
 world for Him in whom all practical prob- 
 lems are solved, and all theoretical perplexi- 
 ties hushed to acquiescent -.expectation, to 
 old Olave the Smith, all these things were 
 but as the language of an unknown world. 
 
 Philosophy was to him known but in its bar- 
 est practical conclusion ; such as to endure 
 what could not be cured ; history limited itself 
 to narratives of the feuds between the Chatti, 
 the Cherusci, and the Chauci, with a dim 
 background of mythical heroes in the far East 
 which constituted also his theology.
 
 riCTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 51! 
 
 And yet beneath those silent lips flowed 
 the sources from which all poetry and philos- 
 ophy and mythology had sprung, the rejoic- 
 ing, sorrowing, struggling, yearning human 
 heart. To him also God was indeed the only 
 source of life. Before him also was Death, 
 and the life unknown. 
 
 And Siward felt not a doubt that in that 
 redeeming life and death of the Son of God, 
 Lord of all men, lay what would meet his 
 father's sorrows and needs, dim and speech- 
 less as they were, as well as those which had 
 learned to name themselves. 
 
 What then was to unseal that dumb heart 
 to him ? 
 
 He had not yet learned the potency of the 
 spell which lay in that worthy name by which 
 he was named. He had yet to learn that it 
 could roll away the great stone which seemed 
 an essential part of the rock, and gave no sign 
 of the hollows within, as easily as it could dis- 
 entangle the subtlest fastenings. 
 
 " Father," he said one day, as they sat 
 alone together in a little inner court, to which 
 for the first time he had gathered strength to 
 walk. " This city is a dungeon to you. I 
 used to feel it so once. We will go back to- 
 gether to the forests." 
 
 The old man made no reply for some min-
 
 512 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 utes. His face worked painfully, and at last 
 he exclaimed abruptly, 
 
 " The whole world is a prison to me ! Si- 
 ward ! Boy ! My son ! you had no right to 
 keep me here against my will; no right to 
 prevent my dying as a soldier, and make me 
 live on as a sick woman. To me it would 
 have been nothing to fall among their beasts. 
 I should never have risen again. It was a 
 great wrong to give me no choice, to keep 
 me chained to a miserable old age to see thee 
 suffer thus." 
 
 " Father ! " Siward said, " I had no choice ; 
 no more than thou hadst. I have learned of 
 the Father in heaven, thine and mine. I had 
 to obey Him. I have sworn allegiance to the 
 Master Who redeemed us, to Whom we be- 
 long, thou and I. Thou didst not know of 
 Him. Painful or pleasant to thee or to me, it 
 was for me to go to Him I serve, and for thee 
 to stay here and learn of Him. I did but 
 what I had to do. He called and I could but 
 obey " 
 
 For the first time the seal seemed broken ; 
 the bewildered look changed into one of ques- 
 tioning. 
 
 And, simple as a little child, the old man 
 sat and listened to the Story which the little 
 child can learn, and received the religion
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 513 
 
 which " enters in at lowly doors," because it 
 is no elaborate machinery of opinion, but the 
 revelation of relationships, the record of facts, 
 the story of a life and death and a life that 
 ne^cr does more, and a love that never fails. 
 
 And as he listened and learned, the myste- 
 ries of our common human life grew clear to 
 him, the rents and fissures of the heart torn 
 and convulsed by the changes of seventy years, 
 were filled with the living waters, every rent 
 and fissure but deepening its capacity to re- 
 ceive, and the murmurs of the infinite sea 
 by whose shore we are all standing, to which 
 he had listened wondering so long, not know- 
 ing what they meant or whence they came, 
 were changed into music and were interpreted 
 into a triumphant song echoing the Voice 
 which commanded its waves, and the harps of 
 God on the other shore. 
 
 Gradually Siward endeavored to accustom 
 himself to his cramped and narrowed life. 
 
 Often he would watch Clcelia Diodora and 
 think how his heart had warmed, of old, into 
 a glow of compassion for her and other suf- 
 ferers, and how little he had comprehended 
 what it was actually to suffer, to take the bit- 
 ter cup of deprivation and pain into one's own 
 hands, and not merely try to make it tolera- 
 ble to others, but really drink it ourself. 
 22*
 
 514 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 The Cross gained for him ever deeper sig- 
 nificance ; not only to save His own from 
 suffering, but to enable them to suffer and by 
 suffering to grow pure and strong, lowly and 
 loving, like Himself, had He suffered. Not 
 as an Imperial largess, from the throne of the 
 Universe, which was His, had He shed pity 
 on the world, not from the joyous overflow- 
 ings of an unbroken heart, but from the depths 
 of a heart broken for man, broken by men, 
 the Fountain of Divine Compassion flowed. 
 
 So, slowly, he learned to bow beneath the 
 Master's yoke, the yoke the Father laid on 
 him, and bowing beneath it, found it grow 
 good and kindly, not a fetter to hinder from 
 serving, not a burden to encumber, but the 
 yoke binding to the service appointed him, 
 and therefore for him the highest, and the 
 best. 
 
 And having thus submitted, he had learned 
 his lesson and done his work, and from him 
 the yoke was taken off. 
 
 The apparent recovery of the spent strength 
 did not continue. 
 
 The heat of the Roman summer in the stag- 
 nant air of the close city dwellings, finished 
 in the strong northern frame the work which 
 the wild beasts had begun. 
 
 There was little speech among them all
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 515 
 
 about the end which he slowly grew to hope, 
 and those who watched him to fear ; no per- 
 fect finishing, no sweet melodious close of life. 
 Imperfect, unfinished, fragmentary, it ceased 
 to be seen. 
 
 With countless explanatory words unspo- 
 ken, and high hopes unfulfilled, and high pur- 
 poses not even uttered. 
 
 Not " as a tale that is told ;" incomplete, 
 unexplained, inexplicable, as the first pages of 
 a tale which is not told, which is but begun. 
 The last legible page rising to no climax, 
 rounded off with no Finis, not the chapter, 
 not the sentence even finished. 
 
 Incomplete, because immortal. 
 
 Unfinished, because scarcely even begun. 
 Passing imperceptibly and quietly into the 
 next stage of life, as childhood into youth, and 
 youth into manhood, without a break, at 
 least, without a break to him, to the deathless 
 redeemed spirit commending itself into the 
 hands of the Father. 
 
 But to those left below who belonged not 
 yet to the life beyond the eternal gates, to 
 whom, therefore, seen from this side, they 
 seem, not the shadow they are, but often the 
 only reality in' a world of shadows, many 
 things yet remained to do, many lessons to 
 learn, many sacrifices to accomplish.
 
 516 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 The meaning 1 , and the quiet beauty, of the 
 life they had ceased to have among them, be- 
 gan to unfold itself before them. 
 
 He had said so little. How was it that he 
 had been so much to all ? 
 
 " Ah ! " old Laon said, " we, the talkers, 
 shall pass away and leave no such blank and 
 silence as this. Other floods of speech will 
 flow on and drown ours in forgetfulness, while 
 these silent lives echo on and on. Speech is 
 for the present. Deeds are for all time. They 
 never die, but live on in the hearts of men, 
 and out of the hearts, out of which are the 
 issues, ever fresh, of fresh life. 
 
 " I thought," he said at another time, " I 
 was teaching him, as I told him all the wise 
 things I knew, while he worked steadily on 
 at the old workshop in the Suburra ; now and 
 then asking some childlike question, or in dim 
 struggling words trying to make me under- 
 stand the old legends of his people. But all 
 the while he was teaching me." 
 
 " How was it," Laon said, again one day, 
 " that he never seemed doing anything won- 
 derful, and yet when he sacrificed his life, like 
 one of the heroes of old, no one thought it 
 anything wonderful for him to do. We have 
 had a hero with us. And we did not know it. 
 Oh, why did we not know it?" 
 
 " I knew it," his mother said, softly, but
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 with a triumphant light in her eyes. " I knew 
 it always." 
 
 And Clcelia Diodora felt that she also had 
 known it. From the moment when he had 
 saved her from the trampling of the crowd by 
 placing her so gently on the steps of the tem- 
 ple, to her all manly heroism had been en- 
 shrined in his form, as all womanly heroism 
 in that of her sister the Vestal. To her he 
 seemed not farther off, but rather nearer, now 
 that one veil of flesh was rent between them 
 forever. And she could not help feeling a 
 kind of keen joy in -the pain which, while it 
 impoverished this poor transitory world be- 
 low, enriched the world above where those 
 she loved best abode, with another victorious 
 heart who had well fought his fight. 
 
 Hilda wept over her brother and would not 
 be comforted. " She had thought the Master 
 would have come back for them all," she said. 
 " She had thought He would have been here 
 and her brother would not have died." 
 
 But Diodora said, 
 
 " I would not have our dearest escape what 
 our Lord underwent for us. I would not 
 miss, or have them miss one step of the dark 
 way He trod. What are chariots of fire to 
 the glory of treading in His footsteps? To 
 all eternity I think it will be sweet to have 
 drunk of His cup, to have been baptized with
 
 518 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 His baptism. For ever for ever, I think it 
 will be good to have died as our Saviour 
 died." 
 
 Callias found a solace in lavishing all the 
 skill he had in making the rocky sepulchre in 
 the Catacombs where Siward was laid, as 
 beautiful as he could with symbolic painting. 
 
 In the presence of that through which, so 
 lately, that strong and gentle spirit so uncon- 
 scious of its beauty had spoken to them, he 
 felt it would be a sacrilege to withdraw the 
 veil of humility which had clothed him. Nor 
 would he darken the memory of the presence 
 of that free and glad triumphant spirit with 
 symbols of defeat and pain. Not Inward but 
 to his Lord, his Lord who had crowned him, 
 must all the Sacred Symbols point. Not of 
 the humiliation of that Lord must they speak, 
 but of His glory and His joy, the glory and 
 the joy the liberated spirits were sharing 
 now. 
 
 The sepulchre was brightened with the 
 form of the good Shepherd, strong and joy- 
 ous in everlasting youth, feeding His flocks 
 in heaven and earth, and carrying His lambs 
 in His bosom : the Shepherd and the Living 
 time, the Life of men, the source of all the 
 life and all the fruits of grace and all the wine 
 of joy in heaven and on earth. 
 
 So with these happy symbols around their
 
 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 519 
 
 resting- place, these early disciples left the 
 precious mortal remains. 
 
 But not in the Sepulchre, in the dark, under 
 that low, cold roof, did they seek and find 
 communion with him, any more than with his 
 Lord and theirs. 
 
 Something unutterably dear and sacred was 
 indeed laid and left there, sure to be sacredly 
 guarded by Him who had left nothing in the 
 Sepulchre where He had been laid but the 
 folded grave-clothes, whose voice was, one 
 morning, to ring through all the sepulchres 
 and make them as empty as His own. 
 
 But not in the Sepulchre, and in the dark- 
 ness, in the daylight, where work could be 
 done ; in the world where slavery and the 
 gladiatorial games still had their constant vic- 
 tims ; in the world of the oppressed and the 
 wronged, of outcast babes, and of lives lost in 
 ways unutterably worse than death, where as 
 yet there was no hospital for the sick, no 
 refuge for the poor ; in the world of blacker 
 evil still, the world, not of the oppressed but 
 of the oppressor, of those who enslaved the 
 slaves, and cast out their own babes to perish, 
 and delighted in the dying agonies of the am- 
 phitheatre ; in the world which nevertheless 
 Christ the Lord had loved and had redeemed, 
 and where He was working with His own for 
 man, there would they be nearest those who
 
 520 VICTORY OF THE VANQUISHED. 
 
 absent from the body were present with the 
 Lord : There they would be working with 
 them in one Kingdom, in one Family, in one 
 Service. " To them," as their contemporaries 
 said, " every strange land was as their native 
 country, and every native country was as a 
 foreign land." 
 
 " Not the world where our beloved dwell 
 with Christ is the Under-world ; but this," 
 Clcelia Diodora loved to say. " Not this, can be 
 the Home, but what He who knew it, called 
 His Father's House. 
 
 " Not we, but they it is who are awake, who 
 are the Living and the Strong. 
 
 " Not we it is who shall have the precedence 
 in the day of the great triumph, but they." 
 
 And then once more together, together with 
 Him, before us all, will be infinite lengths 
 and breadths and heights and depths beyond, 
 and no darkness anywhere." 
 
 And even then, even there, even forever 
 the deepest depth of our joy, as the only 
 strength of our agony, will be " To Thee, 
 Master, submitting ourselves wholly, to be 
 and do whatever is commanded us. To thee 
 subject most religiously, body and soul, for- 
 ever."
 
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 /CHRONICLES OF THE SCHONBERG-COTTA 
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 By the Author of "The Schonberg-Cotta Family." 
 
 THE EARLY DAWN ; OR, SKETCHES OF CHRISTIAN 
 LIFE IN ENGLAND IN THE OLDEN TIME. By the 
 author of the Schonberg-Cotta Family. With Introduction 
 
 by Prof. H. B. SMITH, D.D. 12010 $i 50 
 
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 The Christian Life of England in the Olden Time is heie depicted, 
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 The Druid is first introduced in converse with the Jew and the Chris- 
 tian. The Two Martyrs of Verulam fall within the period of the" 
 Roman domination, full fifteen hundred years ago. The fortunes of 
 an Anglo-Saxon Family are briefly sketched through three genera- 
 tions. The contests of the Saxon and the Norman, and their different 
 traits, are vividly portrayed, in the time of the Crusades. And few 
 tales are more interesting and instructive than that in which Cuthbert 
 narrates his experience in the Order of St. Francis and his illumina- 
 tion by the " Everlasting Gospel " of Joachim, and Cicely relates 
 how Dr. Wycliffe, of Oxford, ministered to her spiritual needs and 
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 and graphic descriptions of scenes and persons. But more than this is her rare gift 
 of tracing the workings of the human soul in its needs and aspirations, its human 
 iove, its divine longings. The permanent religious wants, which remain the same 
 ander all varieties of external fortune, are so truthfully set forth that the Past be- 
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 D 
 
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 Bw the Author of "The Schonberg-Cotta Fami /." 
 IARY OF MRS. KITTY TREVYLYAN. A STORY 
 
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 life and simplicity in Cornwall. At the date the story opens the 
 " mischievous fanatics," Whitefield and Wesley, begin to disturb the 
 parish with their plain preaching. Kitty very soon goes up to Lon- 
 don to pay a visit to the family of her uncle, who is a dissenter, and 
 there she meets those reformers, who are turning the kingdom upside 
 down with their new doctrines. The main interest of the book i3 
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 ciety, the dangers of travelling, and the faithful pictures of the dress 
 and manners of that age will interest all who are not attracted by the 
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 in the old homestead, on the storm-vexed shores of Cornwall, becomes, from tho 
 author's skilful painting, and fine perception of character, a reality from henceforth to 
 her readers ; and when the heroine leaves it to gain the glimpses of the great wcrfd 
 that form the historical portion of the book, she carries with her the good wishes of 
 all." AT. Y. Times. 
 
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 powerful, because so perfectly natural, sketches of life and manners." Hartford 
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 in kind but keen thrusts at the follies and mistakes of conventional piety ; it mishee 
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 quite remarkable for its nice detection of the starting-points of error, the places wher 
 divine doctrines have been spliced with human ones." Vermont Record. 
 
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 Family.' It sparkles on aln.ost every page with gems of thought, while tbe rMratiw 
 tt one of absorbing interest." >. S. Ttines.
 
 Dodd & Mead's Catalogue. 
 
 By the Author of "The Schonberg-Cotta Family." 
 
 WINIFRED BERTRAM ; AND THE WORLD SHE 
 LIVED IN. By the author of the Schunberg-Cctta 
 
 Family. I vol. i2mo $i 75 
 
 Fine edition, crown Svo, tinted paper 2 50 
 
 Cabinet edition, i6mo, tinted paper I 75 
 
 Sunday-school edition, iSmo, illustrated .... I oo 
 
 Unlike the author's previous works, it is not historical, but a story 
 of modern life, with its scene laid in the heart of London. Winifred 
 is a bright child, who very early in a naive way begins to be blase, 
 having nothing to do but gratify her own childish desires. The lesson 
 of the book is that one can only live happily and profitably by sym- 
 pathy with others, and in exertion to benefit others. The characters 
 arc all ordinary and natural people, and the plot is without one sen- 
 sational incident, but the author's genius for irradiating the coninion, 
 her simple, pure spirit, her delicate humor, her faculty of seizing upon 
 and representing character with fidelity, and the lovely spirit of mo- 
 rality and religion, make the book a delightful one. The whole story 
 is suffused with vivacity and grace. 
 
 " George Elliot, whom we regard as the i$reatest female novelist of the age, never 
 exceeded the terseness and epigrammatic force of expression of some passages in 
 
 Winifred Bertram The allego/y of the expanding and contracting 
 
 chamber is one of the most exquisite things in modern literature." -Round Table. 
 
 "A charming and quickening story, as we uiight anticipate from the author." 
 Congregationalist. 
 
 " Delightful and charming are not properly descriptive of it, for while it is both, w 
 is more than both ; it is of the kind of books tliac cnc cannot read without growing 
 better." Indianapolis State Jotirnal. 
 
 " It differs from its predecessors in that it is a story of our own time, but it is like 
 them in its felicitous portraiture of character, its life-likeness in narrative and dia- 
 loeue. and its exquisite illustrations of precious gospel tnr*h." Christian Timet. 
 
 " In her previous works it might have been supposed that some part of their suc- 
 cess was due to the happy choice of her subjects, or to the quaintness ar.d novelty 
 of the form in which they were presented. But here there ij no gentle illusion of 
 the kind, and the effect is to place her clearly foremost among thj Hv-ng writers of 
 religious stories. It is altogether the best and ablest book of the accomplished 
 nuthor. " Sunday-School Times. 
 
 " A succession of pictures of conversations, scenes, and comments, which shuw t 
 mtndroful measure of shrewd common sense and genuine knowledge ol human n^ 
 nnrc." -National Baptist.
 
 Dodd & Mead's Catalogue. 
 
 By the Author of " The Schonberg-Cotta Family." 
 
 *T*HE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS. A 
 
 -* Story of the Civil Wars. By the author of the Schoii- 
 
 bcrg-Cotta Family, i vol. I2mo $i 75 
 
 Cabinet edition, i6mo, tinted paper I 75 
 
 Sunday-school edition, iSmo, illustrated .... I oo 
 
 This work, the opening scene of which is in New England, is asso- 
 ciated with a period of English history in the I7th century, involving 
 political and religious questions in which Americans are deeply in- 
 terested. In its vivid and truthful impersonations of character, its 
 great historic interest, its inimitable pictures of domestic life, min- 
 gled throughout with an unaffected tone of religious sentiment, the 
 author has fully equalled in this volume her Cotta Family, which has 
 delighted so many thousands. 
 
 " On the whole, we are inclined to assign to this a higher position and greater 
 merit than to any of Mrs. Charles' works." Independent. 
 
 " If this work had preceded in its publication the Schonberg-Cotta Family, we are 
 not sure that it would not have rivalled it in popular favor." New York Evangelist, 
 
 " The quaint antique style of the volume gives it a strong flavor of those eventftu 
 times, while the tact and fidelity with which the prominent historical circumstancs 
 are interwoven with the fictitious incidents of the plot impart to it an air of natural- 
 ness hardly inferior to that of a cotemporary chronicle. With a curious instinct she 
 
 in Great Britain, and proceeds through the civil wars that followed. The two fami- 
 lies whose names afford a title to the volume were on opposite sides of the great 
 question of the day, and the story is well wrought out in the well-known style of the, 
 author. Since the Schiinberg-Cotta Family, Mrs. Charles has written no book 
 which compares so favorably with the former as this." Methodist Protestant. 
 
 " It is a living book, full of tender sympathies, holy thoughts, and devout quick- 
 eners, yet with sharp, clear-cut delineations of character. The roistering cavalier, 
 the Christian reformer, and, more than all, the womanly women of the time, gather 
 around us, and we know and love them." Christian Register. 
 
 "To tV,e descendants of the Puritans and those who respect their memory, th-a 
 admirable volume will have a charm which even sympathy and interest rarely g : .ve." 
 Neva Haven Palladium. 
 
 " All through the story there is evidence of that earnestness of feeling and refine- 
 ment of thought that have given such a charm to this lady's writings, and have touched 
 the popular heart so effectively while instructing and elevating the reader's lactw 
 and moral &nd religious aspirations." Roxbury Journal.
 
 Dodd & Mead's Catalogue. 
 
 By the Author of " The Schonberg-Cotta Family. " 
 
 ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA. A STORY OF THE 
 COMMONWEALTH AND RESTORATION. Being a Sequel to 
 " The Draytons and the Davenants." By the author ot 
 The Schonberg-Cotta Family. I vol. I2mo . . . $i 75 
 
 Cabinet edition I 75 
 
 Sunday-school edition, iSmo . . I oo 
 
 While this work is complete in itself, yet its historical value and 
 Interest are very much heightened by reading it in connection with its 
 companion volume, " The Draytons and the Davenants," where many 
 of the leading characters are first placed before the reader. These 
 two families are in this volume, as in the preceding, made the warp of 
 the story, into which is woven the history of a most eventful period. 
 Opening with the tragic scenes of the execution of Charles I., we have 
 presented in the highly dramatic style of the author the establishment 
 of the Commonwealth under Cromwell, its brilliant career, the death 
 of the Protector, the restoration of the Monarchy, and the forcible 
 emigration to America of prominent actors in its previous overthrow. 
 
 " The house life, the public teaching, the political relations and partisanships of 
 these times (1637 to 1691) are depicted with consummate power and impressiveness 
 in this volume and the Draytons and the Davenants, to which it is a sequel." 
 Brooklyn Gazette. 
 
 " This work will be found to be a vivid reproduction of the scenes of those stirring 
 days, which more than any other in profane history have an interest for ;<s, and which 
 all Americans need to understand." Christian Advocate. 
 
 " The scenes of the period to which this volume refers are deprived with consum- 
 mate skill and rare beauty, and with such perfeft naturalness that the reader almost 
 forgets that he is not in actual contact with the impressive realities." Albany 
 Express. 
 
 "It has all the varied interests and the peculiar charm which attach to the author'.? 
 ideal and yet historic narratives that are now so familiar to the reading world. No 
 writer of the present day has more deservedly won a place in the hearts of all who 
 love the truth, and who can appreciate that which is pure in sentiment and in domestic 
 life." New York Observer. 
 
 " It blends history with romance, and interweaves most charmingly lessons of the 
 richest moral instruction and the deepest experiences of the Christian life.'" 
 National Baptist. 
 
 " ' On Both Sides of the Sea ' has certainly a charming flavor of the quaint; spirit 
 >f the time it describes, while as a story merely it is of exceeding interest." New 
 Y*H Mail.
 
 Dodd & Mead's Catalogue. 
 
 By the Author of " The Schonberg-Cotla Family." 
 
 MARY, THE HANDMAID OF THE LORD By 
 the Author of the Schonberg-Cotta Family. iSino, 
 tinted paper. Cloth extra, red edges $i oo 
 
 This work is intensely devotional in its nature. The subject is 
 Mary, the Mother of the Lord. Out of her life history the author 
 has drawn a series of seven essays, all of which are pure as the water 
 of life. The book is not historic, as are the other literary produc- 
 tions of the same lady, but its talent is none the Jsss marked than 
 lhat which is displayed in the Schonberg-Cotta Family. This fact is 
 enough to recommend it to all lovers of truth and piety. 
 
 " It is v.Titten with all the accomplished author's charm of style, and breathes a 
 devotion and fervor which cannot fail to kindle corresponding emotions in the hcait 
 9i the reader." Christian Times. 
 
 " Novelty of incident of course is not the charm of this beautiful book. It is the 
 reverent and thoughtful tone of mind that the author bungs to the contemplation of 
 one of the most deeply interesting characters of holy writ." New York Times. 
 
 POEMS. By the author of the Schonberg-Cotta Family. 
 Comprising " The Women of the Gospels," " The Three 
 Wakings," etc., with other Poems never before published. 
 i elegant vol., l8mo. Cloth extra, red edges . . $i oo 
 
 The book is divided into three parts ; the first composed of a 
 series of Poems on the Women of the Gospels (Mary the Mother of 
 the Lord, Mary Magdalene, etc.) ; the second made up of miscella- 
 neous pieces ; and the third comprising Hymns and Religious 
 Poems. 
 
 " They are religious in character and earnest in expression, and will prove a very 
 acceptable addition to our devotional books." Congregationalist. 
 
 " The same clearness of expression, delicacy of sentiment, and purity of English, 
 which mark her prose works, enrich these verses also." Southern Presbyterian. 
 
 " We have not found in this collection a single poem which is not marked with 
 some striking thought, while the correctness which is conspicuous in her prose com- 
 positions equally follows her through the mazes of her somewhat various veree," 
 S. S. Titties. 
 
 " Some of them are very sweet, evinciag not cnly much poetical talent but grwL 4 
 devotional feeling." Ills. Slate ?<nirnitl. '
 
 Dodd & Mead's Catalogue. 
 
 By the Author of "The Schonberg-Cotta Family." 
 
 X T 7ATCHWORDS FOR THE WARFARE OF LIFE. 
 
 * From Dr. MARTIN LUTHER. Translated and arranged 
 
 by the Author of the Schonberg-Cotta Family. i2mo. 
 
 Elegantly printed on tinted paper. Cloth. Extra bevelled 
 
 boards, . $i 75 
 
 "An appreciative mind has explored the rich storehouse of 
 Luther's writing, and gathered with loving hand the most valuable 
 gems, and has so arranged them that each cluster reflects some 
 phase or event of his actual life." These selections are most sug- 
 gestively arranged under appropriate headings. The Author calls 
 it " a most appropriate pendant to the Schonberg-Cotta Family." 
 
 " We have learned mere of Luther's personal history from the ana in this 
 volume than from the most labored biography." Phila. Press. 
 
 " We cannot help thinking that this is the most valuable of the works of the 
 Author, as it is certainly as interesting as any. It gives us a better idea than 
 volumes of history can of the strength, and vigor, and originality of Luther's 
 mind." Young M^n's Quarterly. 
 
 ' They show us the heart of the great Christian warrior in the midst of hia 
 warfare. Those relating to the death of his little daughter, Magdalena, are won- 
 derfully beautiful and touching." 5". .S". Times. 
 
 HTHE SONG WITHOUT WORDS. Leaves from a 
 -*- very old book, dedicated to Children. By the author of 
 the Schonberg-Cotta Family. Beautifully illustrated, and 
 exquisitely printed and bound. Square i6mo. . . $o 75 
 " A truly wonderful little allegory, in which a solitary child by the 
 ea hears the song without words of the natural objefts around him, 
 which are described in the most charming manner, and finally dis- 
 covers the words through the aid of his sister, wrecked and thrown 
 ashore near his lonely sea-side home." 
 
 " This little story for children reads like a tender and exquisite poem. It is at 
 once a fairy tale, a lesson of pure religion, and a charming sea-idyl in prose." In- 
 dependent. 
 
 " This is a sweet Hide allegory, poetical in its prose, and heavenly in its leachirgs." 
 '-Indianapolis State Journal. 
 
 " It is beautifully printed and illustrated, and the story, which is written in th;it 
 ihnpli yet elegant style which in former works has gamed the auth>r so many fll 
 luirero, is one of the most beautiful child stories we have ever read.' Daily It- if 
 conti*.