酷兔英语

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In general, any woman has fundamental charm for any man. When this
charm becomes particular, then we call it love. Miriam had this

particular charm for me. Verily I was co-partner in her charm.
Half of it was my own man's life in me that leapt and met her wide-

armed and made in me all that she was desirable plus all my desire
of her.

Miriam was a grand woman. I use the term advisedly. She was fine-
bodied, commanding, over and above the average Jewish woman in

stature and in line. She was an aristocrat in social caste; she was
an aristocrat by nature. All her ways were large ways, generous

ways. She had brain, she had wit, and, above all, she had
womanliness. As you shall see, it was her womanliness that betrayed

her and me in they end. Brunette, olive-skinned, oval-faced, her
hair was blue-black with its blackness and her eyes were twin wells

of black. Never were more pronounced types of blonde and brunette
in man and woman met than in us.

And we met on the instant. There was no self-discussion, no
waiting, wavering, to make certain. She was mine the moment I

looked upon her. And by the same token she knew that I belonged to
her above all men. I strode to her. She half-lifted from her couch

as if drawn upward to me. And then we looked with all our eyes,
blue eyes and black, until Pilate's wife, a thin, tense, overwrought

woman, laughed nervously" target="_blank" title="ad.神经质地;胆怯地">nervously. And while I bowed to the wife and gave
greeting, I thought I saw Pilate give Miriam a significant glance,

as if to say, "Is he not all I promised?" For he had had word of my
coming from Sulpicius Quirinius, the legate of Syria. As well had

Pilate and I been known to each other before ever he journeyed out
to be procurator over the Semitic volcano of Jerusalem.

Much talk we had that night, especially Pilate, who spoke in detail
of the local situation, and who seemed lonely and desirous to share

his anxieties with some one and even to bid for counsel. Pilate was
of the solid type of Roman, with sufficient imagination

intelligently to enforce the iron policy of Rome, and not unduly
excitable under stress.

But on this night it was plain that he was worried. The Jews had
got on his nerves. They were too volcanic, spasmodic, eruptive.

And further, they were subtle. The Romans had a straight,
forthright way of going about anything. The Jews never approached

anything directly, save backwards, when they were driven by
compulsion. Left to themselves, they always approached by

indirection. Pilate's irritation was due, as he explained, to the
fact that the Jews were ever intriguing to make him, and through him

Rome, the catspaw in the matter of their religious dissensions. As
was well known to me, Rome did not interfere with the religious

notions of its conquered peoples; but the Jews were for ever
confusing the issues and giving a political cast to purely

unpolitical events.
Pilate waxed eloquent over the diverse sects and the fanatic

uprisings and riotings that were continually occurring
"Lodbrog," he said, "one can never tell what little summer cloud of

their hatching may turn into a thunder-storm roaring and rattling
about one's ears. I am here to keep order and quiet. Despite me

they make the place a hornets' nest. Far rather would I govern
Scythians or savage Britons than these people who are never at peace

about God. Right now there is a man up to the north, a fisherman
turned preacher, and miracle-worker, who as well as not may soon

have all the country by the ears and my recall on its way from
Rome."

This was the first I had heard of the man called Jesus, and I little
remarked it at the time. Not until afterward did I remember him,

when the little summer cloud had become a full-fledged thunderstorm.
"I have had report of him," Pilate went on. "He is not political.

There is no doubt of that. But trust Caiaphas, and Hanan behind
Caiaphas, to make of this fisherman a political thorn with which to

prick Rome and ruin me."
"This Caiaphas, I have heard of him as high priest, then who is this

Hanan?" I asked.
"The real high priest, a cunning fox," Pilate explained. "Caiaphas

was appointed by Gratus, but Caiaphas is the shadow and the
mouthpiece of Hanan."

"They have never forgiven you that little matter of the votive
shields," Miriam teased.

Whereupon, as a man will when his sore place is touched, Pilate
launched upon the episode, which had been an episode, no more, at

the beginning, but which had nearly destroyed him. In all innocence
before his palace he had affixed two shields with votive

inscriptions. Ere the consequent storm that burst on his head had
passed the Jews had written their complaints to Tiberius, who

approved them and reprimanded Pilate. I was glad, a little later,
when I could have talk with Miriam. Pilate's wife had found

opportunity to tell me about her. She was of old royal stock. Her
sister was wife of Philip, tetrarch of Gaulonitis and Batanaea. Now

this Philip was brother to Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea,
and both were sons of Herod, called by the Jews the "Great."

Miriam, as I understood, was at home in the courts of both
tetrarchs, being herself of the blood. Also, when a girl, she had

been betrothed to Archelaus at the time he was ethnarch of
Jerusalem. She had a goodly fortune in her own right, so that

marriage had not been compulsory. To boot, she had a will of her
own, and was doubtless hard to please in so important a matter as

husbands.
It must have been in the very air we breathed, for in no time Miriam

and I were at it on the subject of religion. Truly, the Jews of
that day battened on religion as did we on fighting and feasting.

For all my stay in that country there was never a moment when my
wits were not buzzing with the endless discussions of life and

death, law, and God. Now Pilate believed neither in gods, nor
devils, nor anything. Death, to him, was the blackness of unbroken

sleep; and yet, during his years in Jerusalem, he was ever vexed
with the inescapable fuss and fury of things religious. Why, I had

a horse-boy on my trip into Idumaea, a wretched creature that could
never learn to saddle and who yet could talk, and most learnedly,

without breath, from nightfall to sunrise, on the hair-splitting
differences in the teachings of all the rabbis from Shemaiah to

Gamaliel.
But to return to Miriam.

"You believe you are immortal," she was soon challenging me. "Then
why do you fear to talk about it?"

"Why burden my mind with thoughts about certainties?" I countered.
"But are you certain?" she insisted. "Tell me about it. What is it

like--your immortality?"
And when I had told her of Niflheim and Muspell, of the birth of the

giant Ymir from the snowflakes, of the cow Andhumbla, and of Fenrir
and Loki and the frozen Jotuns--as I say, when I had told her of all

this, and of Thor and Odin and our own Valhalla, she clapped her
hands and cried out, with sparkling eyes:

"Oh, you barbarian! You great child! You yellow giant-thing of the
frost! You believer of old nurse tales and stomach satisfactions!

But the spirit of you, that which cannot die, where will it go when
your body is dead?"

"As I have said, Valhalla," I answered. "And my body shall be
there, too."

"Eating?--drinking?--fighting?"
"And loving," I added. "We must have our women in heaven, else what

is heaven for?"
"I do not like your heaven," she said. "It is a mad place, a beast

place, a place of frost and storm and fury."
"And your heaven?" I questioned.

"Is always unending summer, with the year at the ripe for the fruits
and flowers and growing things."

I shook my head and growled:
"I do not like your heaven. It is a sad place, a soft place, a

place for weaklings and eunuchs and fat, sobbing shadows of men."
My remarks must have glamoured her mind, for her eyes continued to

sparkle, and mine was half a guess that she was leading me on.
"My heaven," she said, "is the abode of the blest."

"Valhalla is the abode of the blest," I asserted. "For look you,
who cares for flowers where flowers always are? in my country, after

the iron winter breaks and the sun drives away the long night, the
first blossoms twinkling on the melting ice-edge are things of joy,

and we look, and look again.
"And fire!" I cried out. "Great glorious fire! A fine heaven yours

where a man cannot properlyesteem a roaring fire under a tight roof
with wind and snow a-drive outside."

"A simple folk, you," she was back at me. "You build a roof and a
fire in a snowbank and call it heaven. In my heaven we do not have

to escape the wind and snow."
"No," I objected. "We build roof and fire to go forth from into the

frost and storm and to return to from the frost and storm. Man's
life is fashioned for battle with frost and storm. His very fire

and roof he makes by his battling. I know. For three years, once,
I knew never roof nor fire. I was sixteen, and a man, ere ever I

wore woven cloth on my body. I was birthed in storm, after battle,
and my swaddling cloth was a wolfskin. Look at me and see what

manner of man lives in Valhalla."
And look she did, all a-glamour, and cried out:

"You great, yellow giant-thing of a man!" Then she added pensively,
"Almost it saddens me that there may not be such men in my heaven."

"It is a good world," I consoled her. "Good is the plan and wide.
There is room for many heavens. It would seem that to each is given

the heaven that is his heart's desire. A good country, truly, there
beyond the grave. I doubt not I shall leave our feast halls and

raid your coasts of sun and flowers, and steal you away. My mother
was so stolen."

And in the pause I looked at her, and she looked at me, and dared to
look. And my blood ran fire. By Odin, this was a woman!

What might have happened I know not, for Pilate, who had ceased from
his talk with Ambivius and for some time had sat grinning, broke the

pause.
"A rabbi, a Teutoberg rabbi!" he gibed. "A new preacher and a new

doctrine come to Jerusalem. Now will there be more dissensions, and
riotings, and stonings of prophets. The gods save us, it is a mad-

house. Lodbrog, I little thought it of you. Yet here you are,
spouting and fuming as wildly as any madman from the desert about

what shall happen to you when you are dead. One life at a time,
Lodbrog. It saves trouble. It saves trouble."

"Go on, Miriam, go on," his wife cried.
She had sat entranced during the discussion, with hands tightly

clasped, and the thought flickered up in my mind that she had
already been corrupted by the religious folly of Jerusalem. At any

rate, as I was to learn in the days that followed, she was unduly
bent upon such matters. She was a thin woman, as if wasted by

fever. Her skin was tight-stretched. Almost it seemed I could look
through her hands did she hold them between me and the light. She

was a good woman, but highly nervous, and, at times, fancy-flighted
about shades and signs and omens. Nor was she above seeing visions

and hearing voices. As for me, I had no patience with such
weaknesses. Yet was she a good woman with no heart of evil.

I was on a mission for Tiberius, and it was my ill luck to see
little of Miriam. On my return from the court of Antipas she had

gone into Batanaea to Philip's court, where was her sister. Once
again I was back in Jerusalem, and, though it was no necessity of my

business to see Philip, who, though weak, was faithful to Roman
will, I journeyed into Batanaea in the hope of meeting with Miriam.

Then there was my trip into Idumaea. Also, I travelled into Syria
in obedience to the command of Sulpicius Quirinius, who, as imperial

legate, was curious of my first-hand report of affairs in Jerusalem.
Thus, travelling wide and much, I had opportunity to observe the

strangeness of the Jews who were so madly interested in God. It was
their peculiarity. Not content with leaving such matters to their

priests, they were themselves for ever turning priests and preaching


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