The Martyr of Golgotha (Volume 1); A Picture of Oriental Tradition (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. AN OATH IS SACRED. Sorrow like joy has its limits; the one ceases to exist when the heart's desire is satisfied, the other, when the feelings, dulled by suffering, become hardened against emotion. The unhappy orphan felt he could weep no more; his eyes were now dry and tearless. He remained three months in his dreary prison cell, forgotten and abandoned by humanity; his only thought during these weary months, was a thought of revenge. One morning his jailer entered the cell, and told him he was free. Dimas rushed to his dwelling, and there he learnt from a neighbour that his father's corpse had remained six days unburied, and that when the gravediggers had come at last, they had thrown the body in the dung-pit, reserved as the burying-place for lepers. Dimas listened to this awful tale without proffering a syllable in reply. Not a tear came to his eye; his heart was dead to sorrow, but his thirst for vengeance grew greater and more insatiable. As a rank weed, sending forth its obnoxious roots, it wound itself closer and closer abouthis whole being, until all the noble passions within his breast seemed extinct, and this base one alone assumed undisputed sway over his nature. That day and night he wandered aimlessly through the streets of Jerusalem. At daybreak he found himself in the quarter called Bezeth, the new city. Those narrow, dirty, crooked streets formed part of the rich, the opulent Jerusalem, but neither the Psalms sung in the temple of Zion, nor the perfume from the gardens of Herod, nor the wealth of the city of David, reached this quiet and retired quarter. The dwellings here were those of honest wool-merchants, industrious armourers, and people engaged in commerce and labor. Dimas worn out and undecided whither he s...