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Jerusalem, goaded to resistance by the incessant usurpations and
insolence of Rome, leagued together its discordant factions to rebel
against the common enemy and tyrant. Inferior to their foe in all but
the unconquerable hope of liberty, they surrounded their city with
fortifications of uncommon strength, and placed in array before the
temple a band rendered desperate by patriotism and religion. Even the
women preferred to die, rather than survive the ruin of their country.
When the Roman army approached the walls of the sacred city, its
preparations, its discipline, and its numbers, evinced the conviction
of its leader, that he had no common barbarians to subdue. At the
approach of the Roman army, the strangers withdrew from the city.
Among the multitudes which from every nation of the East had
assembled at Jerusalem, was a little congregation of Christians. They
were remarkable neither for their numbers nor their importance. They
contained among them neither philosophers nor poets. Acknowledging no
laws but those of God, they modelled their conduct towards their
fellow-men by the conclusions of their individual judgment on the
practical application of these laws. And it was apparent from the
simplicity and severity of their manners, that this contempt for human
institutions had produced among them a character superior in singleness
and sincere self-apprehension to the slavery of pagan customs and the
gross delusions of antiquated superstition. Many of their opinions
considerably resembled those of the sect afterwards known by the name
of Gnostics. They esteemed the human understanding to be the paramount
rule of human conduct; they maintained that the obscurest religious
truth required for its complete elucidation no more than the strenuous
application of the energies of mind. It appeared impossible to them
that any doctrine could be subversive of social happiness which is not
capable of being confuted by arguments derived from the nature of
existing things. With the devoutest submission to the law of Christ,
they united an intrepid spirit of inquiry as to the correctest mode of
acting in particular instances of conduct that occur among men.
Assuming the doctrines of the Messiah concerning benevolence and
justice for the regulation of their actions, they could not be
persuaded to acknowledge that there was apparent in the divine code any
prescribed rule whereby, for its own sake, one action rather than
another, as fulfilling the will of their great Master, should be
preferred.
The contempt with which the magistracy and priesthood regarded this
obscure community of speculators, had hitherto protected them from
persecution. But they had arrived at that precise degree of eminence
and prosperity which is peculiarly obnoxious to the hostility of the
rich and powerful. The moment of their departure from Jerusalem was the
crisis of their future destiny. Had they continued to seek a precarious
refuge in a city of the Roman empire, this persecution would not have
delayed to impress a new character on their opinions and their conduct;
narrow views, and the illiberality of sectarian patriotism, would not
have failed speedily to obliterate the magnificence and beauty of their
wild and wonderful condition.
Attached from principle to peace, despising and hating the pleasures
and the customs of the degenerate mass of mankind, this unostentatious
community of good and happy men fled to the solitudes of Lebanon. To
Arabians and enthusiasts the solemnity and grandeur of these desolate
recesses possessed peculiar attractions. It well accorded with the
justice of their conceptions on
the relative duties of man towards his fellow in society, that they
should labour in unconstrained equality to dispossess the wolf and the
tiger of their empire, and establish on its ruins the dominion of
intelligence and virtue. No longer would the worshippers of the God of
Nature be indebted to a hundred hands for the accommodation of their
simple wants. No longer would the poison of a diseased civilization
embrue their very nutriment with pestilence. They would no longer owe
their very existence to the vices, the fears, and the follies of
mankind. Love, friendship, and philanthropy, would now be the
characteristic disposers of their industry. It is for his mistress or
his friend that the labourer consecrates his toil; others are mindful,
but he is forgetful, of himself. 'God feeds the hungry ravens, and
clothes the lilies of the fields, and yet Solomon in all his glory is
not like to one of these.'
Rome was now the shadow of her former self. The light of her grandeur
and loveliness had passed away. The latest and the noblest of her poets
and historians had foretold in agony her approaching slavery and
degradation. The ruins of the human mind, more awful and portentous
than the desolation of the most solemn temples, threw a shade of gloom
upon her golden palaces which the brutal vulgar could not see, but
which the mighty felt with inward trepidation and despair. The ruins of
Jerusalem lay defenceless and uninhabited upon the burning sands; one
visited, but in the depth of solemn awe, this accursed and solitary
spot. Tradition says that there was seen to linger among the scorched
and shattered fragments of the temple, one being, whom he that saw
dared not to call man, with clasped bands, immoveable eyes, and a
visage horribly serene. Not on the will of the capricious multitude,
nor the constant fluctuations of the many and the weak, depends the
change of empires and religions. These are the mere insensible elements
from which a subtler intelligence moulds its enduring statuary. They
that direct the changes of this mortal scene breathe the decrees of
their dominion from a throne of darkness and of tempest. The power of
man is great.
After many days of wandering, the Assassins pitched their tents in
the valley of Bethzatanai. For ages had this fertile valley lain
concealed from the adventurous search of man, among mountains of
everlasting snow. The men of elder days had inhabited this spot. Piles
of monumental marble and fragments of columns that in their integrity
almost seemed the work of some intelligence more sportive and fantastic
than the gross conceptions of mortality, lay in heaps beside the lake,
and were visible beneath its transparent waves. The flowering
orange-tree, the balsam, and innumerable odiferous shrubs, grew wild in
the desolated portals. The fountain tanks had overflowed; and, amid the
luxuriant vegetation of their margin the yellow snake held its
unmolested dwelling. Hither came the tiger and the bear to contend for
those once domestic animals who had forgotten the secure servitude of
their ancestors. No sound, when the famished beast of prey had
retreated in despair from the awful desolation of this place, at whose
completion he had assisted, but the shrill cry of the stork, and the
flapping of his heavy wings from the capital of the solitary column,
and the scream of the hungry vulture baffled of its only victim. The
lore of ancient wisdom sculptured in mystic characters on the rocks.
The human spirit and the human hand had been busy here to accomplish
its profoundest miracles. It was a temple dedicated to the God of
knowledge and of truth. The palaces of the Caliphs and the Caesars
might easily surpass these ruins in magnitude and sumptuousness: but
they were the designs of tyrants and the work of slaves. Piercing
genius and consummate prudence had planned and executed Bethzatanai.
There was deep and important meaning in every lineament of its
fantastic sculpture. The unintelligible legend, once so beautiful and
perfect, so full of poetry and history, spoke, even in destruction,
volumes of mysterious import, and obscure significance.
But in the season of its utmost prosperity and magnificence, art
might not aspire to vie with nature in the valley of Bethzatanai. All
that was wonderful and lovely was collected in this deep seclusion. The
fluctuating elements seemed to have been rendered everlastingly
permanent in forms of wonder and delight. The mountains of Lebanon had
been divided to their base to form this happy valley; on every side
their icy summits darted their white pinnacles into the clear blue sky,
imaging, in their grotesque outline, minarets, and ruined domes, and
columns worn with time. Far below, the silver clouds rolled their
bright volumes in many beautiful shapes, and fed the eternal springs
that, spanning the dark chasms like a thousand radiant rainbows, leaped
into the quiet vale, then, lingering in many a dark glade among the
groves of cypress and of palm, lost themselves in the lake. The
immensity of these precipitous mountains, with their starry pyramids of
snow, excluded the sun, which overtopped not, even in its meridian,
their overhanging rocks. But a more heavenly and serener light was
reflected from their icy mirrors, which, piercing through the
many-tinted clouds, produced lights and colours of inexhaustible
variety. The herbage was perpetually verdant, and clothed the darkest
recesses of the caverns and the woods.
Nature, undisturbed, had become art enchantress in these solitudes:
she had collected here all that was wonderful and divine from the
armoury of her omnipotence. The very winds breathed health and
renovation, and the joyousness of youthful courage. Fountains of
crystalline water played perpetually among the aromatic flowers, and
mingled a freshness with their odour. The pine boughs became
instruments of exquisite contrivance, among which every varying breeze
waked music of new and more delightful melody. Meteoric shapes, more
effulgent than the moonlight, hung on the wandering clouds, and mixed
in discordant dance around the spiral fountains. Blue vapours assume
strange lineaments under the rocks and among the ruins, lingering like
ghosts with slow and solemn step. Through a dark chasm to the east, in
the long perspective of a portal glittering with the unnumbered riches
of the subterranean world, shone the broad moon, pouring in one yellow
and unbroken stream her horizontal beams. Nearer the icy region, autumn
and spring held an alternate reign. The sere leaves fell and choked the
sluggish brooks; the chilling fogs hung diamonds on every spray; and in
the dark cold evening the howling winds made melancholy music in the
trees. Far above, shone the bright throne of winter, clear, cold, and
dazzling. Sometimes there was seen the snowflakes to fall before the
sinking orb of the beamless sun, like a shower of fiery sulphur. The
cataracts, arrested in their course, seemed, with their transparent
columns, to support the darkbrowed rocks. Sometimes the icy whirlwind
scooped the powdery snow aloft, to mingle with the hissing meteors, and
scatter spangles through the rare and rayless atmosphere.
Such strange scenes of chaotic confusion and harrowing sublimity,
surrounding and shutting in the vale, added to the delights of its
secure and voluptuous tranquillity. No spectator could have refused to
believe that some spirit of great intelligence and power had hallowed
these wild and beautiful solitudes to a deep and solemn mystery.
The immediate effect of such a scene, suddenly presented to the
contemplation of mortal eyes, is seldom the subject of authentic
record. The coldest slave of custom cannot fail to recollect some few
moments in which the breath of spring or the crowding clouds of sunset,
with the pale moon shining through their fleecy skirts, or the song of
some lonely bird perched on the only tree of an unfrequented heath, has
awakened the touch of nature. And they were Arabians who entered the
valley of Bethzatanai; men who idolated nature and the God of nature;
to whom love and lofty thoughts, and the apprehensions of an
uncorrupted spirit, were sustenance and life. Thus securely excluded
from an abhorred world, all thought of its judgment was cancelled by
the
rapidity of their fervid imaginations. They ceased to acknowledge, or
deigned not to advert to, the distinctions with which the majority of
base and vulgar minds control the longings and struggles of the soul
towards its place of rest. A new and sacred fire was kindled in their
hearts and sparkled in their eyes. Every gesture, every feature, the
minutest action, was modelled to beneficence and beauty by the holy
inspiration that had descended on their searching spirits. The epidemic
transport communicated itself through every heart with the rapidity of
a blast from heaven. They were already disembodied spirits; they were
already the inhabitants of paradise. To live, to breathe, to move, was
itself a sensation of immeasurable transport. Every new contemplation
of the condition of his nature brought to the happy enthusiast an added
measure of delight, and impelled to every organ, where mind is united
with external things, a keener and more exquisite perception of all
that they contain of lovely and divine. To love, to be beloved,
suddenly became an insatiable famine of his nature, which the wide
circle of the universe, comprehending beings of such inexhaustible
variety and stupendous magnitude of excellence, appeared too narrow and
confined to satiate.
Alas, that these visitings of the spirit of life should fluctuate and
pass away! That the moments when the human mind is commensurate with
all that it can conceive of excellent and powerful, should not endure
with its existence and survive its most momentous change! But the
beauty of a vernal sunset with its overhanging curtains of empurpled
cloud, is rapidly dissolved, to return at some unexpected period, and
spread an alleviating melancholy over the dark vigils of despair.
It is true the enthusiasm of overwhelming transport which had
inspired every breast among the Assassins is no more. The necessity of
daily occupation and the ordinariness of that human life, the burthen
of which it is the destiny of every human being to bear, had smothered,
not extinguished, that divine and eternal fire. Not the less indelible
and permanent were the impressions communicated to all; not the more
unalterably were the features of their social character modelled and
determined by its influence.
Rome had fallen. Her senate-house had become a polluted den of
thieves and liars; her solemn temples, the arena of theological
disputants, who made fire and sword the missionaries of their
inconceivable beliefs. The city of the monster Constantine,
symbolizing, in the consequences of its foundation, the wickedness and
weakness of his successors, feebly imagined with declining power the
substantial eminence of the Roman name. Pilgrims of a new and mightier
faith crowded to visit the lonely ruins of Jerusalem, and weep and pray
before the sepulchre of the Eternal God. The earth was filled with
discord, tumult, and ruin. The spirit of disinterested virtue had armed
one-half of the civilized world against the other. Monstrous and
detestable creeds poisoned and blighted the domestic charities. There
was no appeal to natural love, or ancient faith, from pride,
superstition, and revenge.
Four centuries had passed thus, terribly characterized by the most
calamitous revolutions. The Assassins, meanwhile, undisturbed by the
surrounding tumult, possessed and cultivated their fertile valley. The
gradual operation of their peculiar condition had matured and perfected
the singularity and excellence of their character. That cause, which
had ceased to act as an immediate and overpowering excitement, became
the unperceived law of their lives, and sustenance of their natures.
Their religious tenets had also undergone a change, corresponding with
the exalted condition of their moral being. The gratitude which they
owed to the benignant Spirit by which their limited intelligences had
not only been created but redeemed, was less frequently
adverted to, became less the topic of comment or contemplation; not,
therefore, did it cease to be their presiding guardian, the guide of
their inmost thoughts, the tribunal of appeal for the minutest
particulars of their conduct. They learned to identify this mysterious
benefactor with the delight that is bred among the solitary rocks, and
has its dwelling alike in the changing colours of the clouds and the
inmost recesses of the caverns. Their future also no longer existed,
but in the blissful tranquillity of the present. Time was measured and
created by the vices and the miseries of men, between whom and the
happy nation of the Assassins, there was no analogy nor comparison.
Already had their eternal peace commenced. The darkness had passed away
from the open gates of death.
The practical results produced by their faith and condition upon
their external conduct were singular and memorable. Excluded from the
great and various community of mankind, these solitudes became to them
a sacred hermitage, in which all formed, as it were, one being, divided
against itself by no contending will or factious passions. Every
impulse conspired to one end, and tended to a single object. Each
devoted his powers to the happiness of the other. Their republic was
the scene of the perpetual contentions of benevolence; not the
heartless and assumed kindness of commercial man, but the genuine
virtue that has a legible superscription in every feature of the
countenance, and every motion of the frame. The perverseness and
calamities of those who dwelt beyond the mountains that encircled their
undisturbed possessions, were unknown and unimagined. Little
embarrassed by the complexities of civilized society, they knew not to
conceive any happiness that can be satiated without participation, or
that thirsts not to reproduce and perpetually generate itself. The path
of virtue and felicity was plain and unimpeded. They clearly
acknowledged, in every case, that conduct to be entitled to preference
which would obviously produce the greatest pleasure. They could not
conceive an instance in which it would be their duty to hesitate, in
causing, at whatever expense, the greatest and most unmixed delight.
Hence arose a peculiarity which only failed to germinate in uncommon
and momentous consequences, because the Assassins had retired from the
intercourse of mankind, over whom other motives and principles of
conduct than justice and benevolence prevail. It would be a difficult
matter for men of such a sincere and simple faith, to estimate the
final results of their intentions, among the corrupt and slavish
multitude. They would be perplexed also in their choice of the means,
whereby their intentions might be fulfilled. To produce immediate pain
or disorder for the sake of future benefit, is consonant, indeed, with
the purest religion and philosophy, but never fails to excite
invincible repugnance in the feelings of the many. Against their
predilections and distastes an Assassin, accidentally the inhabitant of
a civilized community, would wage unremitting hostility from principle.
He would find himself compelled to adopt means which they would abhor,
for the sake of an object which they could not conceive that he should
propose to himself. Secure and self-enshrined in the magnificence and
pre-eminence of his conceptions, spotless as the light of heaven, he
would be the victim among men of calumny and persecution. Incapable of
distinguishing his motives, they would rank him among the vilest and
most atrocious criminals. Great, beyond all comparison with them, they
would despise him in the presumption of their ignorance. Because his
spirit burned with an unquenchable passion for their welfare, they
would lead him, like his illustrious master, amidst scoffs, and
mockery, and insult, to the remuneration of an ignominous death.
Who hesitates to destroy a venomous serpent that has crept near his
sleeping friend, except the man who selfishly dreads lest the malignant
reptile should turn his fury on himself? And if the poisoner has
assumed a human shape, if the bane be distinguished only from the
viper's venom
by the excess and extent of its devastation, will the saviour and
avenger here retract and pause entrenched behind the superstition of
the indefeasible divinity of man? Is the human form, then, the mere
badge of a prerogative for unlicensed wickedness and mischief? Can the
power derived from the weakness of the oppressed, or the ignorance of
the deceived, confer the right in security to tyrannize and defraud?
The subject of regular governments, and the disciple of established
superstition, dares not ask this question. For the sake of the eventual
benefit, he endures what he esteems a transitory evil, and the moral
degradation of man disquiets not his patience. But the religion of an
Assassin imposes other virtues than endurance, when his fellow-men
groan under tyranny, or have become so bestial and abject that they
cannot feel their chains. An Assassin believes that man is eminently
man, and only then enjoys the prerogatives of his privileged condition,
when his affections and his judgment pay tribute to the God of Nature.
The perverse, and vile, and vicious—what were they? Shapes of some
unholy vision, moulded by the spirit of Evil, which the sword of the
merciful destroyer should sweep from this beautiful world. Dreamy
nothings; phantasms of misery and mischief, that hold their death-like
state on glittering thrones, and in the loathsome dens of poverty. No
Assassin would submissively temporize with vice, and in cold charity
become a pander to falsehood and desolation. His path through the
wilderness of civilized society would be marked with the blood of the
oppressor and the ruiner. The wretch, whom nations tremblingly adore,
would expiate in his throttling grasp a thousand licensed and venerable
crimes.
How many holy liars and parasites, in solemn guise, would his saviour
arm drag from their luxurious couches, and plunge in the cold charnel,
that the green and many-legged monsters of the slimy grave might eat
off at their leisure the lineaments of rooted malignity and detested
cunning. The respectable man —the smooth, smiling, polished villain,
whom all the city honours; whose very trade is lies and murder; who
buys his daily bread with the blood and tears of men, would feed the
ravens with his limbs. The Assassin would cater nobly for the eyeless
worms of earth, and the carrion fowls of heaven.
Yet here, religion and human love had imbued the manners of those
solitary people with inexpressible gentleness and benignity. Courage
and active virtue, and the indignation against vice, which becomes a
hurrying and irresistible passion, slept like the imprisoned
earthquake, or the lightning shafts that hang in the golden clouds of
evening. They were innocent, but they were capable of more than
innocencç; for the great principles of their faith were perpetually
acknowledged and adverted to; nor had they forgotten, in this
uninterrupted quiet, the author of their felicity.
Four centuries had thus worn away without producing an event. Men had
died, and natural tears had been shed upon their graves, in sorrow that
improves the heart. Those who had been united by love had gone to death
together, leaving to their friends the bequest of a most sacred grief,
and of a sadness that is allied to pleasure. Babes that hung upon their
mothers' breasts had become men; men had died; and many a wild
luxuriant weed that overtopped the habitations of the vale, had twined
its roots around their disregarded bones. Their tranquil state was like
a summer sea, whose gentle undulations disturb not the reflected stars,
and break not the long still line of the rainbow hues of sunrise.
Where all is thus calm, the slightest circumstance is recorded and
remembered. Before the sixth century had expired one incident occurred,
remarkable and strange. A young man, named Albedir, wandering in the
woods, was startled by the screaming of a bird of prey, and, looking
up, saw blood fall, drop by drop, from among the intertwined boughs of
a cedar. Having climbed the tree, he beheld a terrible and dismaying
spectacle. A naked human body was impaled on the broken branch. It was
maimed and mangled horribly; every limb bent and bruised into frightful
distortion, and exhibiting a breathing image of the most sickening
mockery of life. A monstrous snake had scented its prey from among the
mountains—and above hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst this mass of
desolated humanity, two eyes, black and inexpressibly brilliant, shone
with an unearthly lustre. Beneath the blood-stained eye-brows their
steady rays manifested the serenity of an immortal power, the collected
energy of a deathless mind, spell-secured from dissolution. A bitter
smile of mingled abhorrence and scorn distorted his wounded lip—he
appeared calmly to observe and measure all around—self-possession had
not deserted the shattered mass of life.
The youth approached the bough on which the breathing corpse was
hung. As he approached, the serpent reluctantly unwreathed his
glittering coils, and crept towards his dark and loathsome cave. The
vulture, impatient of his meal, fled to the mountain, that re-echoed
with his hoarse screams. The cedar branches creaked with their
agitating weight, faintly, as the dismal wind arose. All else was
deadly silent.
At length a voice issued from the mangled man. It rattled in hoarse
murmurs from his throat and lungs—his words were the conclusion of
some strange mysterious soliloquy. They were broken, and without
apparent connection, completing wide intervals of inexpressible
conceptions.
'The great tyrant is baffled, even in success. Joy! joy! to his
tortured foe! Triumph to the worm whom he tramples under his feet! Ha!
His suicidal hand might dare as well abolish the mighty frame of
things! Delight and exultation sit before the closed fates of death!—I
fear not to dwell beneath their black and ghastly shadow. Here thy
power may not avail! Thou createst—'tis mine to ruin and destroy.—I
was thy slave—I am thy equal, and thy foe.—Thousands tremble before
thy throne, who, at my voice, shall dare to pluck the golden crown from
thine unholy head!' He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed up his
words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree—he dared not for dismay
remove his eyes. He remained mute in the perturbation of deep and
creeping horror.
'Albedir!' said the same voice, 'Albedir in the name of God,
approach. He that suffered me to fall, watches thee;—the gentle and
merciful spirits of sweet human love, delight not in agony and horror.
For pity's sake approach, in the name of thy good God, approach,
Albedir!' The tones were mild and clear as the responses of Aeolian
music. They floated to Albedir's ear like the warm breath of June that
lingers in the lawny groves, subduing all to softness. Tears of tender
affection started into his eyes. It was as the voice of a beloved
friend. The partner of his childhood, the brother of his soul, seemed
to call for aid, and pathetically to remonstrate with delay. He
resisted not the magic impulse, but advanced towards the spot, and
tenderly attempted to remove the wounded man. He cautiously descended
the tree with his wretched burthen, and deposited it on the ground.
A period of strange silence intervened. Awe and cold horror were
slowly proceeding to the softer sensations of tumultuous pity, when
again he heard the silver modulations of the same
enchanting voice. 'Weep not for me, Albedir! What wretch so utterly
lost, but might inhale peace and renovation from this paradise! I am
wounded, and in pain; but having found a refuge in this seclusion, and
a friend in you, I am worthier of envy than compassion. Bear me to your
cottage secretly: I would not disturb your gentle partner by my
appearance. She must love me more dearly than a brother. I must be the
playmate of your children; already I regard them with a father's love.
My arrival must not be regarded as a thing of mystery and wonder. What,
indeed, but that men are prone to error and exaggeration, is less
inexplicable, than that a stranger, wandering on Lebanon, fell from the
rocks into the vale? Albedir,' he continued, and his deepening voice
assumed awful solemnity, 'in return for the affection with. which I
cherish thee and thine, thou owest this submission.'
Albedir implicitly submitted; not even a thought had power to refuse
its deference. He reassumed his burthen, and proceeded towards the
cottage. He watched until Khaled should be absent, and conveyed the
stranger into an apartment appropriated for the reception of those who
occasionally visited their habitation. He desired that the door should
be securely fastened, and that he might not be visited until the
morning of the following day.
Albedir waited with impatience for the return of Khaled. The
unaccustomed weight of even so transitory a secret, hung on his
ingenuous and unpractised nature, like a blighting, clinging curse. The
stranger's accents had lulled him to a trance of wild and delightful
imagination. Hopes, so visionary and aerial, that they had assumed no
denomination, had spread themselves over his intellectual frame, and,
phantoms as they were, had modelled his being to their shape. Still his
mind was not exempt from the visitings of disquietude and perturbation.
It was a troubled stream of thought, over whose fluctuating waves
unsearchable fate seemed to preside, guiding its unforeseen
alternations with an inexorable hand. Albedir paced earnestly the
garden of his cottage, revolving every circumstance attendant on the
incident of the day. He re-imaged with intense thought the minutest
recollections of the scene. In vain—he was the slave of suggestions
not to be controlled. Astonishment, horror, and awe—tumultuous
sympathy, and a mysterious elevation of soul, hurried away all activity
of judgment, and overwhelmed, with stunning force, every attempt at
deliberation or inquiry.
His reveries were interrupted at length by the return of Khaled. She
entered the cottage, that scene of undisturbed repose, in the
confidence that change might as soon overwhelm the eternal world, as
disturb this inviolable sanctuary. She started to behold Albedir.
Without preface or remark, he recounted with eager haste the
occurrences of the day. Khaled's tranquil spirit could hardly keep pace
with the breathless rapidity of his narration. She was bewildered with
staggering wonder even to hear his confused tones, and behold his
agitated countenance.
On the following morning Albedir arose at sunrise, and visited the
stranger. He found him already risen, and employed in adorning the
lattice of his chamber with flowers from the garden. There was
something in his attitude and occupation singularly expressive of his
entire familiarity with the scene. Albedir's habitation seemed to have
been his accustomed home. He addressed his host in a tone of gay and
affectionate welcome, such as never fails to communicate by sympathy
the feelings from which it flows.
'My friend,' said he, 'the balm of the dew of our vale is sweet; or
is this garden the favoured spot where the winds conspire to scatter
the best odours they can find? Come, lend me your arm awhile, I feel
very weak.' He motioned to walk forth, but, as if unable to proceed,
rested on the
seat beside the door. For a few moments they were silent, if the
interchange of cheerful and happy looks is to be called silence. At
last he observed a spade that rested against the wall. 'You have only
one spade, brother,' said he; 'you have only one, I suppose, of any of
the instruments of tillage. Your garden ground, too, occupies a certain
space which it will be necessary to enlarge. This must be quickly
remedied. I cannot earn my supper of tonight, nor of tomorrow; but
thenceforward, I do not mean to eat the bread of idleness. I know that
you would willingly perform the additional labour which my nourishment
would require; I know, also, that you would feel a degree of pleasure
in the fatigue arising from this employment, but I shall contest with
you such pleasures as these, and such pleasures as these alone.' His
eyes were somewhat wan, and the tone of his voice languid as he spoke.
As they were thus engaged, Khaled came towards them. The stranger
beckoned to her to sit beside him, and taking her hands within his own,
looked attentively on her mild countenance. Khaled inquired if he had
been refreshed by sleep. He replied by a laugh of careless and
inoffensive glee; and placing one of her hands within Albedir's, said,
'If this be sleep, here in this odorous vale, where these sweet smiles
encompass us, and the voices of those who love are heard—if these be
the visions of sleep, sister, those who lie down in misery shall arise
lighter than the butterflies. I came from amid the tumult of a world,
how different from this! I am unexpectedly among you, in the midst of a
scene such as my imagination never dared to promise. I must remain
here—I must not depart.' Khaled, recovering from the admiration and
astonishment caused by the stranger's words and manner, assured him of
the happiness which she should feel in such an addition to her society.
Albedir, too, who had been more deeply impressed than Khaled by the
event of his arrival, earnestly re-assured him of the ardour of the
affection with which he had inspired them. The stranger smiled gently
to hear the unaccustomed fervour of sincerity which animated their
address, and was rising to retire, when Khaled said, 'You have not yet
seen our children, Maimuna and Abdallah. They are by the water-side,
playing with their favourite snake. We have only to cross yonder little
wood, and wind down a patch cut in the rock that overhangs the lake,
and we shall find them beside a recess which the shore makes there, and
which a chasm, as it were the rocks and woods, encloses. Do you think
you could walk there?'—'To see your children, Khaled? I think I could,
with the assistance of Albedir's arm, and yours.'—So they went through
the wood of ancient cypress, intermingled with the brightness of
many-tinted blooms, which gleamed like stars through its romantic
glens. They crossed the green meadow, and entered among the broken
chasms, beautiful as they were in their investiture of odiferous
shrubs. They came at last, after pursuing a path which wound though the
intricacies of a little wilderness, to the borders of the lake. They
stood on the rock which overhung it, from which there was a prospect of
all the miracles of nature and of art which encircled and adorned its
shores. The stranger gazed upon it with a countenance unchanged by any
emotion, but, as it were, thoughtfully and contemplatingly. As he
gazed, Khaled ardently pressed his hand, and said, in a low yet eager
voice, 'Look, look, lo there!' He turned towards her, but her eyes were
not on him. She looked below—her lips were parted by the feelings
which possessed her soul— her breath came and went regularly but
inaudibly. She leaned over the precipice, and her dark hair hanging
beside her face, gave relief to its fine lineaments, animated by such
love as exceeds utterance. The stranger followed her eyes, and saw that
her children were in the glen below; then raising his eyes, exchanged
with her affectionate looks of congratulation and delight. The boy was
apparently eight years old, the girl about two years younger. The
beauty of their form and countenance was something so divine and
strange, as overwhelmed the senses of the beholder like a delightful
dream, with insupportable ravishment. They were arrayed in a loose robe
of linen, through which the exquisite proportions of their form
appeared. Unconscious that they were observed, they did not relinquish
the occupation in which they were engaged. They had constructed a
little boat of the bark of trees, and had given it sails of interwoven
feathers, and launched it on the water. They sat beside a white flat
stone, on which a small snake lay coiled, and when their work was
finished, they arose and called to the snake in melodious tones, so
that it understood their language. For it unwreathed its shining
circles and crept to the boat, into which no sooner had it entered,
than the girl loosened the band which held it to the shore, and it
sailed away. Then they ran round and round the little creek, clapping
their hands, and melodiously pouring out wild sounds, which the snake
seemed to answer by the restless glancing of his neck. At last a breath
of wind came from the shore, and the boat changed its course, and was
about to leave the creek, which the snake perceived and leaped into the
water, and came to the little children's feet. The girl sang to it, and
it leaped into her bosom, and she crossed her fair hands over it, as if
to cherish it there. Then the boy answered with a song, and it glided
from beneath her hands and crept towards him. While they were thus
employed, Maimuna looked up, and seeing her parents on the cliff, ran
to meet them up the steep path that wound round it; and Abdallah,
leaving his snake, followed joyfully. |