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After a general survey of the room, the strangers crossed to their left, and were brought into Ben-Hur's view two men, one very stout, both tall, and both in short tunics. They had not the air of masters of the house or domestics. Everything they saw appeared wonderful to them; everything they stopped to examine they touched. They were vulgarians. The atrium seemed profaned by their presence.
Upon a youth of Ben-Hur's mind and temperament the influence of five years of affluent life in Rome can be appreciated best by recalling that the great city was then, in fact, the meeting-place of the nations their meeting-place politically and commercially, as well as for the indulgence of pleasure without restraint.
Here was the grass coloring the very atmosphere; there the lake, cool and clear, rippling but a few feet under the surface, and helping the trees to their long life in old age. Did the Grove of Daphne excel this one? And the palms, as if they knew Ben-Hur's thought, and would win him after a way of their own, seemed, as he passed under their arches, to stir and sprinkle him with dewy coolness.
The sun stooped low in its course. Awhile the flaring disk seemed to perch itself on the far summit of the mountains in the west, brazening all the sky above the city, and rimming the walls and towers with the brightness of gold. Then it disappeared as with a plunge. The quiet turned Ben-Hur's thought homeward.
The corpse in the atrium was taken up and buried by night; and, as part of Messala's plan, a courier was sent off to Gratus to make him at rest by the announcement of Ben-Hur's death this time past question. "Is that a Death? and are there two? Is Death that woman's mate? Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold."
Servants were already waiting the master's direction. One of them took off his sandals; another unlatched Ben-Hur's Roman shoes; then the two exchanged their dusty outer garments for fresh ones of white linen. "Enter in God's name, enter, and take thy rest," said the host, heartily, in the dialect of the Market-place of Jerusalem; forthwith he led the way to the divan.
That night he counselled with Ilderim, and obtained his assent. Three Arabs came with him to Jericho, where he left them and the horses, and proceeded alone and on foot. Malluch was to meet him in Jerusalem. Ben-Hur's scheme, be it observed, was as yet a generality. In view of the future, it was advisable to keep himself in hiding from the authorities, particularly the Romans.
Ame de boue should be branded with a hot iron on the hickory-nut head of every creature whom its perusal does not benefit. His description of the Battle of Waterloo is to "Ben-Hur's" chariot race what Mount Aetna in eruption is to a glow worm. It transcends the loftiest flights of Shakespeare. Before it even "The Wondrous Tales of Troy" pales its ineffectual fires.
Ben-Hur's heart beat hard as for an instant he had a vision of Jerusalem the capital of the world, and Zion, the site of the throne of the Universal Master. It seemed to the enthusiast rare fortune that the man who had seen the king was at the tent to which he was going.
"All Jerusalem is going out to the prophet, and with many people else the shore on which he abides is like Mount Olivet in the last days of the Passover. Ben-Hur's face flushed with joy. "By this word, O my friends," he said "by this word, our waiting is at end. The herald of the King has appeared and announced him." Upon hearing the letter read, they also rejoiced at the promise it held out.
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