Page:Ben-Hur a tale of the Christ.djvu/248

Rh &quot;Enough, Malluch,&quot; he said. &quot;Get you to eat, and make ready to return to the Orchard of Palms; you must help the young man in his coming trial. Come to me in the morning. I will send a letter to Ilderim.&quot; Then in an undertone, as if to himself, he added, &quot;I may attend the Circus myself.&quot;

When Malluch after the customary benediction given and received was gone, Simonides took a deep draught of milk, and seemed refreshed and easy of mind.

&quot;Put the meal down, Esther,&quot; he said; &quot;it is over.&quot;

She obeyed.

&quot;Here now.&quot;

She resumed her place upon the arm of the chair close to him.

&quot;God is good to me, very good,&quot; he said, fervently. &quot;His habit is to move in mystery, yet sometimes he permits us to think we see and understand him. I am old, dear, and must go; but now, in this eleventh hour, when my hope was beginning to die, he sends me this one with a promise, and I am lifted up. I see the way to a great part in a circumstance itself so great that it shall be as a new birth to the whole world. And I see a reason for the gift of my great riches, and the end for which they were designed. Verily, my child, I take hold on life anew.&quot; Esther nestled closer to him, as if to bring his thoughts from their far-flying.

&quot;The king has been born,&quot; he continued, imagining he was still speaking to her, &quot;and he must be near the half of common life. Balthasar says he was a child on his mother’s lap when he saw him, and gave him presents and worship; and Ilderim holds it was twenty-seven years ago last December when Balthasar and his companions came to his tent asking a hiding-place from Herod. Wherefore the coming cannot now be long delayed. To-night—to-morrow it may be. Holy fathers of Israel, what happiness in the thought? I seem to hear the crash of the falling of old walls and the clamor of a universal change—ay, and for the uttermost joy of men, the earth opens to take Rome in, and they look up and laugh and sing that she is not,