Julian's words had been more lively than the Maccabee had expected. He
was obliged to give attention before his kinsman made an end.
"You are fond of summaries, Julian," he said, "dealt in your own coin.
Look you, now, at my hope. You confess that these Jews lack a leader.
They have lacked him so long that they hunger and thirst for one. Also
they have suffered the distresses of disorder so intensely that peace
in any form is most welcome to them. Titus approacheth reluctantly. He
had rather deliver Jerusalem than besiege it. I am of the loved and
dethroned Maccabaean line--acceptable to every faction of Jewry, from
the Essenes to the Sicarii. Titus is my friend, unless he suspects me
as coming to undermine his better friend, the pretty Herod. I shall
help Jerusalem help herself; I shall make peace with Rome; I shall be
King of the Jews!--Behold, is not my summary as practical as yours?"
Julian laughed with an amusement that had a ring of contempt in it.
"There is naught to keep an astronomer from planning a rearrangement
of the stars," he said.
But the Maccabee rode on calmly. Julian sighed. After a while he
spoke.
"Well, how do you proceed? You tell me that these very visionaries
whom you would succor have never laid eyes on you. What marks you as
royal--as a sprig of the great, just and dead Maccabee?"
"I bear proofs, Roman documents of my family and of my birth. Certain
of my party are already organized in Jerusalem and are expecting me,
and I wear the Maccabaean signet. Is not that enough?"
"Nothing of it worth the security of private citizenship and a whole
head!"
"No? Not when there is a dowry of two hundred talents awaiting my
courage to come and get it?"
"Ha! That wife! But will you enter that sure death for a woman you do
not know?"
"And for a fortune I have not possessed and for a kingdom that I never
owned."
"She will not be there! Old Costobarus is not so mired in folly as to
send his daughter into the Pit to provide you with money to--pay
Charon."
"Aquila sent me a messenger at Cæsarea," Philadelphus continued
calmly, "saying that Costobarus was transfigured when he had my
summons. He feels that his God has been good to him to choose his
daughter to share the throne of Judea. Hence, by this time my lady
awaits me in Jerusalem."
Again Julian sighed.
"And there is none in Jerusalem who knows your face?" he asked after a
silence.
"None, except Amaryllis, and she has not seen me since I was sixteen
years old."
"And there also is an obstacle which I had forgotten to enumerate,"
Julian said argumentatively. "You have put your trust in a frail
woman."