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Shortly afterwards Malluch returned to the city. During their absence, a messenger well mounted had been despatched with orders as suggested by Simonides. He was an Arab, and carried nothing written. "Iras, the daughter of Balthasar, sends me with salutation and a message," said a servant to Ben-Hur, who was taking his ease in the tent. "Give me the message."
A certain Melot, a black-eyed girl, plump, and an easy giggler, avowed in strict confidence to her room-fellow that night, that her fate had been told her by a Bohemian a slight and dark-eyed youth was to be her undoing. You will readily understand that this was duly reported by the room-fellow to Balthasar, and by him to Isoult, following the etiquette observed in such matters.
And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in their faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness the special look of life unshared with others. "I'll take her in by the terrace," he thought: "I won't make a common visitor of her."
Esther clung to her father; and he, strong of will as he was, trembled. Balthasar fell down speechless. Even Ben-Hur cried out, "O my God! my God!" Then, as if he divined their feelings or heard the exclamation, the Nazarene turned his wan face towards the party, and looked at them each one, so they carried the look in memory through life.
This dog seems to have taken a fancy to you." For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his side against her leg. Going out under the porch with her, he said: "He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter. Take this for your protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand. He saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh!
But his father had been offered the sovereignty of Holland and Zeeland, and the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had alone, in all human probability, prevented the great prince from becoming constitutional monarch of all the Netherlands, Batavian and Belgic.
The dog Balthasar sniffed round the edges of his trousers; this friendly and cynical mongrel offspring of a liaison between a Russian poodle and a fox-terrier had a nose for the unusual. The strange greetings over, old Jolyon seated himself in a wicker chair, and his two grandchildren, one on each side of his knees, looked at him silently, never having seen so old a man.
Bean had that morning left a carefully written signature at the bank where his draft had been deposited. He later wondered how the scrawl he achieved now could ever be identified as by the same hand. And he was conscious, even as he wrote, that the Countess Casanova and Professor Balthasar were labouring under an excitement equal to his own. It was a big feat to attempt.
Then the soul is released and is not born again, for Nirvana, the last goal, is reached. Only bad men continue to live. The nations of India had been demoralised by that doctrine for centuries. But it did not satisfy wise men. Balthasar thought: If a man starves through a few dozen lives, then something good must come out of it. Or is evil good enough to continue, and good evil enough to cease?
Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening days, with Holly's hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking studiously for what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud, flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to enjoy it.
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