James M. Ludlow

“ As the sun was setting, the huge mass of the citadel rose like a mighty altar from the bosom of the gloom which had already settled about its base. Slowly the shadow had climbed its side, crowding the last bright ray until it vanished from the top of the parapet. It was at this instant that Morsinia appeared. The citadel beneath her was sombre as the coming night which enwrapped it, but her form was radiant in the lingering splendor of the departing day. As she raised her hand in response to the grateful clamor of the people, she seemed the impersonation of a heavenly benediction. ”

“ The happy crowd hurried along as if impelled by their own huzzas, until the bride disappeared within the portal of the house of Shattuck.
An hour later Judas sat alone in his chamber in the palace on Sion. The stars as they floated by looked through the high window, but did not disturb the soul which at that hour was moving through depths as profound as theirs. The gray dawn alone aroused him—in which there was a poetic propriety; for since the day-spring summons all nature to activity, why should it not awaken the tremendous forces of this great heart for its work in resurrecting a nation? ”

“ The doctor warmed with his theme, until, standing up, he put his big hands on Vox's shoulders, and fairly shouted at him:
"Sing, Phil! Sing the brightest, happiest things that God ever inspired men to write. But don't go croaking like an owl because you don't feel like a nightingale."
"Well," said Vox, drawing a long breath, and letting it out in a whistle, "that cheese or something else has inspired you, doctor. I never heard you so eloquent in the pulpit. Why don't you preach at us that way? Take us, as it were, one by one, and go through us, instead of preaching at humanity in the lump. ”

“ The scene within the tent was interrupted by a noise without. A crowd of soldiers had gathered, and were gazing from a respectful distance at a strange-looking man: "A man of heaviness and eaten up with cares." He was clad in the coarsest garments; his beard untrimmed; hatless; a rope about his neck. As Scanderbeg came out of the tent, the man threw himself at his feet, and cried, as he bowed his head upon the ground:
"Strike, Sire! I have sold my country. I have returned to die under the sword of my true chief, rather than live with the blessing of his enemies. ”

“ Our Greek gods are to this God of yours as the bright things about us are to the sun. Though the sun's face be hidden by clouds all things get their brightness from it. And strangely, these voices I speak of seem to be recalling me to something I had once known and forgotten, or to awaken something born in me, but still latent and unintelligible. Your father's clear faith, your own words, your devotion—these have been an interpreter of what I have so vaguely felt. Believe me, Deborah, I commit no sacrilege when I swear my devotion to the God of Israel. ”

“ Can men thwart His plans? Shall we then believe that the infidel Jews crucified the Son of God?"
"God is great, and Mahomet is His Prophet," would roll up from the lips of the scholars.
"Shall we, then, kiss the toe of the pope because he calls himself the grand vizier of Allah, when our Janizaries can cut the throats of his soldiers, as our brethren of Arabia destroyed the crusaders? Or shall we kiss the hand of the patriarch of the Greeks, who claims supremacy in the name of Allah, when already our arms have shut up the whole Greek empire within the walls of Constantinople? ”

“ He had seen her in his dreams, both waking and sleeping; among the women of the Greek camp at the Wady; and only yesterday in peasant garb amid the dying on Bethhoron—yet she was here in her home! He was beginning to question his own mental condition. His hand came to his head as if to certify that it was still upon his shoulders. Deborah quickly proved that this time at least she was no sprite out of the foam of fancy. With a suppressed cry of surprise and gladness she sprang to meet him. He would have been less than a man if he had not extended both hands to embrace her. ”

“ Sophia flashed its benediction upon the travelers, and its challenge of a better faith far across the Bosphorus to the Asiatic Moslem, whose minarets gleamed like spear-heads from beside their mosques. From the point where the Golden Horn meets the strait of the Bosphorus and the sea of Marmora, rose the palace of the emperor, embowered in trees, and surrounded with gardens which loaded the air with the perfume of rarest flowers and the song of birds. Rounding the point into the Golden Horn, the grim old Genoese tower of Galata, on the opposite bank, saluted them with its drooping banner. ”

“ Constantine, after his escape from the Sultan's tent, where he had been taken for the demented Ballaban, was unable to enter Constantinople before it fell. His heart was torn with agonizing solicitude for the fate of Morsinia. He knew too well the determination of the dauntless girl in the event of her falling into the hands of the Turks. Filling his dreams at night, and rising before him as a terrible apparition by day, was that loved form, a suicide empurpled with its own gore. Yet love and duty led him to seek her, or at least to seek the certainty of her fate. ”

“ Dion stood before them.
For a little he was speechless, as if the words he would speak were too cruel to utter. He did not even lift his eyes to the young woman's face.
"Do not speak, sir!" said Deborah. "I know it all. My father has been slain by your people."
"Nay, not slain," replied the Greek. "Your father's God has taken him. As Zeus lives—as Jehovah lives—Elkiah died as only the greatest and best of men can die; no hand struck the blow. On the steps of the altar of his God he himself gave up his life. The gods take the breath of such men with a kiss." ”

“ You are my prisoner."
"I will not be prisoner to a Jew," said the prostrate man. "But I swear by all the gods, that stroke was of no Jew's arm."
"Taunt me not again," shouted the victor, "or, by Jove! the sword, be it Jew or Greek, will find your heart."
"'By Jove!' Why, man, you have not been Jew long enough to learn new oaths. Now strike if you will. My life is yours, but first"—the man assumed an utter indifference of tone and manner—"first I would have a drink of the spring. It is hard to let out one's last breath through a throat so parched." ”

“ For her words about the stars above the Balkans, the snows of Slatiza, and Elizabeth Morsiney, were not accidental. He had no doubt that the Albanian odalisk was the little lady to whom he once made love in the bowers of blackberry bushes, and vowed to defend like a true knight, waving his wooden sword over the head of the goat he rode as a steed. In the midst of such thoughts and emotions, Captain Ballaban awoke to full self-consciousness, and said to himself——
"I am in love! But I am a fool! For a man with ambition must never be in love, except with himself. ”

“ Even in Jerusalem are those who avow that his victories at the Wady and Bethhoron were given him by Heaven. But what think you, Nadan? Is not all genius to plan great deeds, and all heroism to execute them, the gift of Heaven? I sometimes fear lest, except among those Maccabæans, and your own tribesmen, the world has forgotten how to be great. Oh, to be a man, Nadan, and to wear armor, and to ride a steed like Emir! It seems to me that I would fight always in company with the bravest and best, and call them the favored of Heaven, whatever creed or kingdom they belonged to. ”

“ If you are a shepherd of Bethlehem come to adore the Infant Jesu—as you look to be—you must wait until the morning."
"My message is as important to him as that of the angels on that blessed night," said the goatherd, making a deep obeisance and looking up to heaven as if in prayer, as he spoke.
"Then proclaim your message, old crook-staff! we have had glad tidings to-day, but can endure to hear more," said the guard, pushing him away.
"No ear on earth shall hear mine but the general's," cried the old man, raising his voice: "No! by the beard of Moses! it shall not." ”

“ Upon the hastily formed roofs of linked shields, the noted phalanx of the Greek, the Jews hurled great boulders, crashing through brass and bone. The air was darkened with flying missiles, which dropped like a storm of hail upon those in that open valley.
The cry "Mi-camo-ca-ba" echoed seemingly from the very sky. In their blind rage to open ways of reaching the enemy or of flight, the Greeks assailed one another, as the scorpion stings itself to death. Before nightfall the army of Lycias was shattered beneath the strokes of the Hammer of Israel. ”

“ Constantine cut the rope, and, at a push of his hand the dog crawled a few feet until he was clear of the copse; then sprang into the air. There was a hardly audible exclamation of surprise and terror; a low growl of satisfied rage, as when a tiger seizes the food thrown to him in his cage. One man is down in death grapple with his strange assailant whose teeth are at his throat. A sharp whiz and a cry of pain tell that the arrow of Constantine has not missed its mark. ”

“ My faith!" exclaimed Dion. "We Greeks have no such faith as yours. But a single [218] faith have I—that all gods are one, or rather, as your heroism has made me feel, that one God is all. The God of Israel is the God of all nations. That you have taught me. I have found my prophetess, if Israel has none."
"It is the true faith," said Deborah, "but how should you know it? Is a girl's belief more to you than all your boasted philosophy?"
"Not a girl's belief, but a woman's life," cried the Greek enthusiastically. "A life filled with the spirit of her God, is most convincing. ”

“ I can invent a lie better than describe the truth, unless you help me."
"Well," said Morsinia, "tell him as much truth about my appearance as you can, and invent the rest. Tell him—let me see—that my eyes are as bright as the stars that shine above the Balkans."
"Do they shine there more brilliantly than here 324 where they make their toilet in the Bosphorus?" asked the woman.
"Oh! yes," said Morsinia, "for the air is clearest there of any place on the earth. Tell him, too, that my teeth are as white as the snows that lie in the pass of Slatiza." ”

“ We looked for a Greek helmet at least," said Judas, touching her long flowing robe, which even the night showed to be of a gaudy color.
"The Greek women have the freedom of their camps," replied Deborah. "No greater dangers than insulting words have threatened me there, and words do not harm if the soul does not hear them."
"Still, for every such word a Greek life shall pay before another night comes," said Jonathan.
"Not in my revenge, brave men," replied Deborah. "We must not think of such things. What shall we care for insults when our cause is so shamed? ”

“ Think you there is nothing better in this world than to please the Padishah? Ah! it is worth a kingdom to hear that from a man like you, Ballaban. Women say it; but they can do nothing for me. They dissipate my thoughts with their pleasuring me. They make me weak. I have a mind to abolish the whole harem. But to have a man, a strong man, a man with a head to plot for empire and to marshal armies, a man with an arm like thine to make love to me! Ah, that is glorious, comrade. ”

“ But Dion had other thoughts. The vision of the face he had seen at Elkiah's doorway had not faded for an instant from his imagination. Now his impression of her beauty was reinforced by the revelation of her soul. What courage! what audacity! yet not beyond a woman's right! Had he struck a wilful blow at Glaucon, he thought that her wrath would have killed him, so just would it have been, and so imperious was her voice and action. Yet what love this woman was capable of! She seemed to him like some goddess weeping at her own altar which had been despoiled ”

“ I am Emperor, but my empire is doomed. I live no longer for earthly hope, but solely to do duty; nothing but duty, stern duty, painful every instant, crushing always, but a burden heaven imposed on a breaking heart. That heaven appoints it—that, and that alone—makes me willing to live and do it. When the time comes I shall seek death where the slain lie the thickest. ”

“ But these Jews bleed at the heart for the sacrilege Antiochus offers in Jerusalem. I have seen old men drop dead beside their desecrated altars—dead from the shock of their grief at the dishonoring of their God. I have seen others die with such tranquillity of mind amid outward torture that I could not but believe that their souls were drawn from their bodies by the kiss of the divinity they prayed to. Father, I have seen peasants who had never practised foil or been in a battle, suddenly gifted with skill to overthrow the armies of Apollonius and Seron and Gorgias and Lycias. ”

“ The Fate that directs all affairs has indubitably decreed that all this vast peninsula between Adria and Ægea shall lie beneath the shadow of the Padishah's sceptre; for he is Zil-Ullah, the shadow of God. Who can resist the conqueror of the capital of your Eastern Christian Empire; the conqueror of Athens, and of the islands of the sea?"
"Let us then speak no more of this," said Constantine. "Our training has been so different, that we can not hope to agree. But we can be one in the kindliness of our thoughts, as we are of one blood. Jesu bless you, my brother!" ”

“ One who has done such things for my father's house cannot be untrue.' I prayed that Heaven would send his vindication."
"Deborah," replied Judas, "are we two so near to each other that soul speaks to soul without words?"
"God is near to us both, Judas. This I know. He leads me, and He leads you, as He leads all men by you. And what think you, my brother—for such, and father, too, you are to me—is not God near to some Gentiles—to Dion? He has given this man our faith, our spirit of sacrifice, though he is separated from us in blood." ”

“ The empire's misfortunes have not been greater than its crimes. As the rising mists return in rain, so the sins of Constantinople, rising for centuries, will return with storms of righteous retribution. And I fear it will be in our day; for the clouds hang low, and mutter ominously, and there is no bright spot within the horizon."
"Say not so, my Emperor!" cried Morsinia earnestly. "A breath of wind is now scattering yonder cloud over Olympus; and the lightest moving of God's will can do more. ”