How curious was
the lot of all three of them! How strangely had they been exalted! She,
the orphan ward of the Essenes, was now a great and wealthy lady with
everything her heart could desire--except one thing, indeed, which
it desired most of all. And Marcus, the debt-saddled Roman soldier of
fortune, he also, it seemed, had suddenly become great and wealthy,
pomps that he held at the price of playing some fool's part in a temple
to satisfy the whimsy of an Imperial madman.
Caleb, too, had found fortune, and in these tumultuous times risen
suddenly to place and power. All three of them were seated upon
pinnacles, but as Miriam felt, they were pinnacles of snow, which for
aught she knew, might be melted by the very sun of their prosperity. She
was young, she had little experience, yet as Miriam sat there watching
the changeful sea, there came upon her a great sense of the instability
of things, and an instinctive knowledge of their vanity. The men who
were great one day, whose names sounded in the mouths of all, the next
had vanished, disgraced or dead. Parties rose and parties fell, high
priest succeeded high priest, general supplanted general, yet upon each
and all of them, like the following waves that rolled beneath her, came
dark night and oblivion.
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