Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
Was this a picture of herself she heard? The Maccabee was enjoying himself uncommonly. "She will wear the garments of a queen, but how little a slip of silver tissue will become her!" Laodice looked down in alarm at her gleaming garment, and reached for her mantle. The Maccabee had no idea how much pleasure he was to derive in making his own story, Julian's. He continued, almost recklessly, now.
In that very speech was the portrait of the Maccabee that she had come to love through letters. "There is something familiar in your mood," she said thoughtfully. "It seems that I have known you for many years." He made no answer. He had said all that he wished to say to this woman. She noted his silence and rose. "I shall send the girl to you." "Thou art good," he answered and she withdrew.
"There has been no one here but us," the boy said, hesitating at the symptoms of gratitude in the Maccabee's voice. "Us?" "You and me." After another silence, the Maccabee laughed weakly. "It requires two to constitute 'us' and I am, by all signs, not a whole one!" "But you will be in a few days," the boy declared admiringly. "You are an excellent sick man."
The Maccabee was taken aback and embarrassed. He felt that he was an intruder. But even the flush on her face in restraining emotion made her loveliness more than ever winsome. He let his hand drop softly on hers. But in the genuineness of his sympathy he was not too moved to feel that her hand warmed under his clasp.
When he tossed out the first clay, each of the men in the visible segment of that great cordon struck his implement into the ground. And even as the Maccabee watched, he saw grow up under his eyes a wall! He understood. Titus was walling against a wall; turning upon the Jews that same thing which they had reared against him.
The monk turned first red, then pale, and his cheekbones could be seen through his thin cheeks. But he kept silence, after he had taken a spoonful of salt in his mouth to help him to control his tongue. "He is a Maccabee," whispered the prelate. "Conventual disciple is decaying," continued the Prior, jocosely; "the young monks do not obey their superiors any more, but we must have a reformation!
We must revert to the days of Saul!" "Yes; but they declare they will have no king but God; no commander but the Messiah to come; no order but primitive impulse! But the Maccabee will change all that! It is but the far swing of the first revolt. Jerusalem is ready for reason at this hour, it is said." "Yes," Philip assented with a little more spirit.
The morning broke, the sun mounted, the deserted road became populous with all the previous day's host of pilgrims, and the silence in the hills failed before the procession that should not cease till night fell again. Through all the shouting at camel and mule, the talk of parties and the dogged trudging of lonely and uncompanionable solitaries, the Maccabee slept.
The Maccabee saw that they were sounding him for his ambitions, and discreetly effaced them. "Do with me what you will; or if you doubt me, choose a leader among yourselves." They shook their heads. "Then enlist under Simon and John and fight with them," he cried, losing patience. Murmurs and angry looks greeted this suggestion, and the Maccabee put out his hands toward them hopelessly.
Undecided, restless and regretful, the Maccabee lingered, looking after her as she went into the hills, unattended, except for an anomalous old man. The sun of noon shone on her silver dress that the dust of the wayside had not tarnished. He was gloomy and wistful without understanding his discomfort, and afraid for the beautiful unknown going out for seven days into the unfriendly wilderness.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking