Ben Hur, Lew Wallace [top 10 novels txt] 📗

torture he himself had suffered, he drew her face down upon his breast, and sat trembling.

“Avoid it, Esther, avoid it!” he said. “I know not but all who stand and see it⁠—the innocent as well as the guilty⁠—may be cursed from this hour.”

Balthasar sank upon his knees.

“Son of Hur,” said Simonides, with increasing excitement⁠—“son of Hur, if Jehovah stretch not forth his hand, and quickly, Israel is lost⁠—and we are lost.”

Ben-Hur answered, calmly, “I have been in a dream, Simonides, and heard in it why all this should be, and why it should go on. It is the will of the Nazarene⁠—it is God’s will. Let us do as the Egyptian here⁠—let us hold our peace and pray.”

As he looked up on the knoll again, the words were wafted to him through the awful stillness⁠—

“I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

He bowed reverently as to a person speaking.

Up on the summit meantime the work went on. The guard took the Nazarene’s clothes from him; so that he stood before the millions naked. The stripes of the scourging he had received in the early morning were still bloody upon his back; yet he was laid pitilessly down, and stretched upon the cross⁠—first, the arms upon the transverse beam; the spikes were sharp⁠—a few blows, and they were driven through the tender palms; next, they drew his knees up until the soles of the feet rested flat upon the tree; then they placed one foot upon the other, and one spike fixed both of them fast. The dulled sound of the hammering was heard outside the guarded space; and such as could not hear, yet saw the hammer as it fell, shivered with fear. And withal not a groan, or cry, or word of remonstrance from the sufferer: nothing at which an enemy could laugh; nothing a lover could regret.

“Which way wilt thou have him faced?” asked a soldier, bluntly.

“Towards the Temple,” the pontiff replied. “In dying I would have him see the holy house hath not suffered by him.”

The workmen put their hands to the cross, and carried it, burden and all, to the place of planting. At a word, they dropped the tree into the hole; and the body of the Nazarene also dropped heavily, and hung by the bleeding hands. Still no cry of pain⁠—only the exclamation divinest of all recorded exclamations,

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The cross, reared now above all other objects, and standing singly out against the sky, was greeted with a burst of delight; and all who could see and read the writing upon the board over the Nazarene’s head made haste to decipher it. Soon as read, the legend was adopted by them and communicated, and presently the whole mighty concourse was ringing the salutation from side to side, and repeating it with laughter and groans,

“King of the Jews! Hail, King of the Jews!”

The pontiff, with a clearer idea of the import of the inscription, protested against it, but in vain; so the titled King, looking from the knoll with dying eyes, must have had the city of his fathers at rest below him⁠—she who had so ignominiously cast him out.

The sun was rising rapidly to noon; the hills bared their brown breasts lovingly to it; the more distant mountains rejoiced in the purple with which it so regally dressed them. In the city, the temples, palaces, towers, pinnacles, and all points of beauty and prominence seemed to lift themselves into the unrivalled brilliance, as if they knew the pride they were giving the many who from time to time turned to look at them. Suddenly a dimness began to fill the sky and cover the earth⁠—at first no more than a scarce perceptible fading of the day; a twilight out of time; an evening gliding in upon the splendors of noon. But it deepened, and directly drew attention; whereat the noise of the shouting and laughter fell off, and men, doubting their senses, gazed at each other curiously: then they looked to the sun again; then at the mountains, getting farther away; at the sky and the near landscape, sinking in shadow; at the hill upon which the tragedy was enacting; and from all these they gazed at each other again, and turned pale, and held their peace.

“It is only a mist or passing cloud,” Simonides said soothingly to Esther, who was alarmed. “It will brighten presently.”

Ben-Hur did not think so.

“It is not a mist or a cloud,” he said. “The spirits who live in the air⁠—the prophets and saints⁠—are at work in mercy to themselves and nature. I say to you, O Simonides, truly as God lives, he who hangs yonder is the Son of God.”

And leaving Simonides lost in wonder at such a speech from him, he went where Balthasar was kneeling near by, and laid his hand upon the good man’s shoulder.

“O wise Egyptian, hearken! Thou alone wert right⁠—the Nazarene is indeed the Son of God.”

Balthasar drew him down to him, and replied, feebly, “I saw him a child in the manger where he was first laid; it is not strange that I knew him sooner than thou; but oh that I should live to see this day! Would I had died with my brethren! Happy Melchior! Happy, happy Gaspar!”

“Comfort thee!” said Ben-Hur. “Doubtless they too are here.”

The dimness went on deepening into obscurity, and that into positive darkness, but without deterring the bolder spirits upon the knoll. One after the other the thieves were raised on their crosses, and the crosses planted. The guard was then withdrawn, and the people set free closed in upon the height, and surged up it, like a converging wave. A man might take a look, when a newcomer would push him on, and take his place, to be in turn pushed on⁠—and there were laughter and ribaldry and revilements, all for the Nazarene.

“Ha, ha! If thou be King of the Jews, save thyself,” a soldier shouted.

“Ay,” said a