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.  He knew the sorceress.  Salome of Ephesus, who could send the sated theaters wild with her appeal to their senses, had found enchantment of a half-mad city not hard.  Aside from the impiety, in fear of which his own irreligious spirit stood, he saw suddenly opened to him the immense scope of her influence.  Not Simon, not John, not Titus, had discovered the logical appeal to the city’s unbalanced impulses.  But the reckless woman, robing herself in the ancient garb of the days to which the citizens would revert, assuming the pose of a woman they had sanctified, preaching the dogma they would hear, showing them the sign that helped them most, held Jerusalem, at least for that hour, in her hands.

He realized at once that to attempt to denounce her would expose him to destruction at the wolfish hands of the frenzied mob.  There were not soldiers enough in the city to destroy her influence, for she had achieved in her followers that infatuation that goes down to death before it relinquishes its conviction.  Her control was complete.  Seraiah was the anointed one, but the prophetess, the instigator, the founder of the worship, as follows in all apostasies, was the final recipient of the benefits of that devotion.

Philadelphus walked away from the sight of Salome’s triumph.  He had surrendered instantly his hope of regaining the treasure.  The whole of mad Jerusalem had ranged itself with her to protect it.  And Laodice was not yet found.

Chapter XX

AS THE FOAM UPON WATER