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Updated: June 20, 2025
It is bad enough to see our castles overthrown one after another with an interval between in which to recover from the shock, or at least let the echoes of the fall die away; but when they go altogether go as ships sink, as houses tumble in earthquakes the spirits which endure it calmly are made of stuffs sterner than common, and Ben-Hur's was not of them.
Malluch looked into Ben-Hur's face for a hint of meaning, but saw, instead, two bright-red spots, one on each cheek, and in his eyes traces of what might have been repressed tears; then he answered, mechanically, "No!" adding, with fervor, "never;" and a moment after, when he began to recover himself, "If he is an Israelite, never!"
Messala, on the perilous edge of the goal, heard, but dared not look to see what the awakening portended. From the people he received no sign. Above the noises of the race there was but one voice, and that was Ben-Hur's. In the old Aramaic, as the sheik himself, he called to the Arabs, "On, Atair! On, Rigel! What, Antares! dost thou linger now? Good horse oho, Aldebaran!
Despite his familiarity with the ascetic colonists in En-Gedi their dress, their indifference to all worldly opinion, their constancy to vows which gave them over to every imaginable suffering of body, and separated them from others of their kind as absolutely as if they had not been born like them and notwithstanding he had been notified on the way to look for a Nazarite whose simple description of himself was a Voice from the Wilderness still Ben-Hur's dream of the King who was to be so great and do so much had colored all his thought of him, so that he never doubted to find in the forerunner some sign or token of the goodliness and royalty he was announcing.
"I was about to say," he continued, "I have no choice, but take the part you assign me; and as remaining here is to meet an ignoble death, I will to the work at once." "Shall we have writings?" asked Simonides, moved by his habit of business. "I rest upon your word," said Ben-Hur. "And I," Ilderim answered. Thus simply was effected the treaty which was to alter Ben-Hur's life.
Next day about the third hour, out of the pass through which, skirting the base of Mount Gilead, they had journeyed since leaving Ramoth, the party came upon the barren steppe east of the sacred river. Opposite them they saw the upper limit of the old palm lands of Jericho, stretching off to the hill-country of Judea. Ben-Hur's blood ran quickly, for he knew the ford was close at hand.
These and like exclamations filled the saloon, to the stoppage of other speech. The dice-players quit their games; the sleepers awoke, rubbed their eyes, drew their tablets, and hurried to the common centre. "I offer you " "And I " The person so warmly received was the respectable Jew, Ben-Hur's fellow-voyager from Cyprus. He entered grave, quiet, observant.
Instead of speech with a Pythia or a Sibyl, they will sell you a plain papyrus leaf, hardly dry from the stalk, and bid you dip it in the water of a certain fountain, when it will show you a verse in which you may hear of your future." The glow of interest departed from Ben-Hur's face. "There are people who have no need to vex themselves about their future," he said, gloomily.
The fleet that lies moored there is his. You cannot fail to find him." "I give you thanks." "The peace of our fathers go with you." "And with you." With that they separated. Two street-porters, loaded with his baggage, received Ben-Hur's orders upon the wharf. "To the citadel," he said; a direction which implied an official military connection.
It was Ben-Hur's purpose to turn aside at the break of day, and find a safe place in which to rest; but the dawn overtook him while out in the Desert, and he kept on, the guide promising to bring him afterwhile to a vale shut in by great rocks, where there were a spring, some mulberry-trees, and herbage in plenty for the horses.
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