He became violently excited; his eyeb.a.l.l.s glared around in frenzy, and he continued in a fierce whisper:
"It would freeze your cowardly souls only to hear the spells, the incantations, the blasphemies I employed; the watchings, the tortures, the combats, I endured, before I brought Moloch and Beelzebub into subjection to my will. See there, how I have burned their names into my flesh with pencils of iron heated to whiteness!"
He turned back the sleeves of his robe from his white arms, and held them out. Upon one arm in great red letters was the word Moloch, on the other the word Beelzebub.
"It was dreadful! dreadful!-but henceforth they are mine."
The serpent writhed and protruded his tongue. The leopard showed his white teeth, but dropped his yellow head between his paws.
"I have told you," he continued, scornfully, "what const.i.tutes your ambition. Now I will tell you mine. To me belongs the glory of having organized magic and a.s.sociated magicians. I found them a horde of wandering hunters; I shall make them an invisible phalanx of soldiers. I have more than two thousand magicians, in seven different countries, who obey me as one man. By concerted action we have obtained the secret history, the hidden life of all the governors, consuls, warriors, kings and great men throughout that vast region. I am maturing my plans to get them all under my sovereign control. Other conquerors operate from without, by sword and spear and catapult. I conquer from within, by hope and fear and l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion and terror. Unseen, unsuspected, unknown, with legions of invisible soldiers, I shall get possession of all their treasures, all their palaces, all their thrones!
"Do you not see it?" he exclaimed, wildly, starting to his feet. "The lever which truly moves the world lies always on the spiritual side of our life. I advance from the right quarter to my designs. I shall subdue the souls and bodies of men. I shall possess myself of all they possess. I shall become emperor of Rome-yea, monarch of the world. Further still:-I shall advance from realm to realm, from sphere to sphere in the spiritual universe, marshaling around me my hosts of conquering spirits. I shall p.r.o.nounce the Unspeakable Name. My own name shall become Unspeakable!"
While the magician"s imagination soared away in this flight of boundless ambition, his form dilated; a fierce red flush came over his face; his eye, fired with a baleful brilliancy; and the maniac stood forth the very impersonation of that Self-Love which is the moving and controlling genius of h.e.l.l.
His hearers trembled at his words and manner.
He sunk back into his chair and leaned his brow upon his hand. No one disturbed his reverie. All were spellbound by the speaker"s enthusiasm.
After several minutes he raised his head and continued in a subdued tone:
"But, alas! my friends! this glorious dream is far from accomplishment. If we had only to conquer the race of men, the difficulties would not be insuperable. But our fiercest fight is on the spiritual side. All are contending for the same prizes-power and glory. When we have beaten back the shining ones whom they call angels, our combat begins with each other; for each demands all for himself.
"Yet I despair not"-he added, after another pause and with a certain sadness in his manner-"I despair not of realizing my inexpressible dream.
I have come into possession lately of an ancient and wonder-working formula, whereby I hope to take many steps forward. Listen!
"I discovered by secret means only to be acquired in Egypt, that in a certain wild spot of the Lybian desert one of the oldest and greatest cities of the world was buried in the sand; a city so old that it has no historical record; a people inconceivably wicked, in comparison with whom the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were children sporting in the golden dawn of innocence. This city and these people had been overwhelmed by the same Power which buried the cities of the plain in the Salt Sea.
"I found this spot. By the aid of spiritual powers I burrowed my way into their buried palaces and temples. I exhumed their remains. I made food and drink of their ashes. The spirits who accompanied me fled away, and I was left alone. I blended my being with that of the lost people. I became a skeleton among skeletons, a shade among shades. I conquered. I drew voices out of the silence, forms out of the darkness, life out of death. I summoned with difficulty and danger the ruling spirits of the perished race. I mastered their master. I made him my slave. I compelled him to disgorge the secrets of the wilderness and the grave. I have enriched myself with treasures of knowledge and power, of which no man even dreams."
Intense excitement pervaded his listeners-fear of the man and stupefaction at his words.
"I will show you," he continued-"by a strange art I have acquired, I will show you this new demon who is also one of the oldest. I have summoned this antediluvian monster to-night. He stands before me face to face, like man to man. You cannot hear his voice nor see his shape; but you shall feel his presence and mark his shadow on the wall."
He now let down a large white curtain against the wall, to the top of which it had been rolled like a great map. He resumed his seat and drew forth a curious cup from a drawer in the table. It had words and figures engraven upon it. He gazed intently into the cup, and p.r.o.nounced some words in an unknown tongue.
A moment of awful silence ensued, every one gazing steadfastly at the curtain and hearing the beating of his own heart. Suddenly a strange, benumbing, paralyzing sensation invaded the nerves of all present. It was the approaching sphere of the antediluvian spirit.
"See!" said the magician hoa.r.s.ely, "See! He comes!"
And sure enough! Like the shadow of a man which the moon makes when it is going down, there crept a shadow up over the curtain; dim, wavering, misshapen, which slowly settled into distincter form, and stood with bended head and sweeping beard, with tottering knee and outstretched arms, like a very old man of gigantic size begging alms.
All shuddered at the presence of this terrific spirit, more than Saul at the rising of Samuel in the cave of the witch of Endor.
"From this most ancient arch-demon of our art," continued Simon, pointing to the shadow, "I have extorted a method of incantation which promises more power and glory than all the combined rites and amulets in the world.
He will confirm what I say."
The shadow slowly turned its old and hideous face toward the audience and made an affirmative motion with its head. It then pa.s.sed away from the curtain like the shadow of a cloud creeping over a field of grain. All breathed more freely.
"This formula will procure me a liquid of such potent magnetic virtue, that a single drop of it put into a gla.s.s of wine will bind the woman who drinks it, entirely and for ever, soul and body, to the man who administers it. She will surrender friends, home, name, fame, everything to his wishes.
"Miserable sensualists that you are," he exclaimed, raising his voice and confronting his cowering audience, "the use for which you would chiefly value this inestimable secret has no attractions for me. My spirit looks upward, not downward. I scorn pleasure. I love glory and power. Through woman I shall conquer man. Woman herself shall be the agent of transferring all that husbands, lovers, brothers, sons, friends possess, to the great magician who shall be a G.o.d in her eyes."
"Glorious ambition!" exclaimed Caiaphas.
"When I have achieved the conquest of the world," said the earnest madman, "I will resign the women to you, as a conqueror throws the treasures of a sacked city to the soldiers who have won him a crown."
"And the liquid?" inquired Magistus-"how is it to be obtained?"
"That brought me hither from my subterranean palace in Egypt, where I was initiated into the sacred mysteries by Isis herself."
All ears paid him the strictest attention.
"I must obtain the body of a young girl and convey it to the buried city of the sands, where Ja-bol-he-moth, whom you saw just now, will a.s.sist me in the magical rites. We must take her alive. I have made every preparation. I have a vehicle specially constructed for concealment. That will convey us to Joppa whence I have just come. From there to Alexandria by a vessel which awaits me. Thence to the Lybian desert."
"And the young woman?" asked Caiaphas.
"She must be pure as the snow nearest heaven: innocent as the babe tended by angels: beautiful as Aurora when she treads the golden pavement with her feet of pearl: loving as the heart of Spring when she gives her life to the earth: holy as the spirit of prayer which breathed from the lyre of King David."
"And what would you do with this peerless maiden?" said some one in the group.
"Are you acquainted with the processes and powers of magic, and do you ask such a question? Do you know the virtues of the dust of a dove"s heart? of the ashes of a viper"s tongue? of the pulverized bones of a babe"s head?
of the blood of a living man? Can you not imagine what subtile forces we may extract from the essences of a virgin body?"
"Has your oracle directed you where to find this wonderful woman?" asked Magistus.
"My presence here is a warrant that it has. That woman is a Jewess, of the tribe of Benjamin, the youngest child, born at the death of her mother."
These were the last words heard by either Ulema or Martha. These affrighted women had been the silent witnesses and auditors of the extraordinary scene I have described. With increasing amazement and terror they found themselves unable to stand, and they sank softly upon the floor. When the object of Simon"s visit to Bethany began to reveal itself, they trembled with intense fear. When the horrible idea took distinct shape in her mind, Martha had almost burst into a wild shriek of agony.
The shriek was with great difficulty suppressed. The terror and agony were borne in upon the young soul, and she fell into a long and fearful swoon which seemed death itself.
After a long, long time, when all was still and dark, Ethopus approached as softly as he had departed. He aroused Ulema from her trance of grief, and the two bore the unreviving form of Martha back to the chamber. She was laid upon the bed; and as Ethopus pa.s.sed out of the door, Ulema saw him by the dim light of the stars lifting his face and hands earnestly to heaven.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]
VII.
_SAVED._
[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]