Philadelphus, who had seen the fall of the tower, and had dropped down
from the wall as soon as he had explained it all to himself, came upon
new disorders. Great concourses of awakened Jews were hurrying to the
walls to see what had happened, or to behold the Roman army wiped out
by the Angel of Death as the army of Sennacherib had perished. Others
collected at the end of the Tyropean Bridge and watched the pinnacle
of the Temple for the miracle which should restore the city. But the
burned ruin where the Herodian palace had stood was the center of the
most characteristic frenzy.
There thousands were congregated. A great bonfire had been kindled and
above the multitude, on a colossal architrave fallen at one end from
the giant columns that had supported it, stood a figure, redly
illuminated by the fire, tiny as compared to the immense ruin of its
high place, but Titan in its control over the wild mob below it.
It was a woman, a Jewess, dressed in faithful imitation of the archaic
garb of the prophetesses, mantled with a storm of flying black hair,
stripped of veil or cloak, and splendidly defiant of the restrictions
laid upon woman long after the days of Deborah.
Over the heads of the panting multitude she shook a pair of arms that
glistened for whiteness, and bewitched by the spell of their motion.
From under her half-fallen lids shot gleams of fire that transfixed
any upon whom they fell; from her supple body shaken at times with the
power of its own dynamic force her hearers caught the grosser
infection of physical excitement; they swayed with her as blown by the
wind; they ceased to breathe in her periods; they groaned as the
intensity of her fervor pressed upon them for response that they could
not shape in words; they wept, they shouted, they prophesied, and over
them swept ever the witchery of her wonderful voice, preaching
impiety--the worship of Seraiah!
Philadelphus looked at this frantic work with a creeping chill.
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