THE PRINCE OF INDIA (Historical Novel). Lew Wallace

view of the monk’s face. Where had he seen it? His memory went back, far back of the recent. A chill struck his heart. The features, look, air, portrait, the expression indefinable except as a light of outcoming spirit, were those of the man he had helped crucify before the Damascus gate in the Holy City, and whom he could no more cast out of mind than he could the bones from his body. His feet seemed rooting into the flinty flags beneath them. He heard the centurion call to him: “Ho, there! If thou knowest the Golgotha, come show it.” He felt the sorrowful eyes of the condemned upon him. He struck the bloody cheek, and cried as to a beast: “Go faster, Jesus!” And then the words, wrung from infinite patience at last broken:

      “I am going, but do thou TARRY TILL I COME.”

      For relief, he spoke:

      “What dost thou, my friend?”

      Sergius opened his eyes and answered simply, “I am praying.”

      “To whom?”

      “To God.”

      “Art thou a Christian?”

      “Yes.”

      “God is for the Jew and the Moslem.”

      “Nay,” said Sergius, looking at the Prince without taking down his hands, “all who believe in God find happiness and salvation in Him—the Christian as well as the Jew and the Moslem.”

      The questions had been put with abrupt intensity; now the inquisitor drew back astonished. He heard the very postulate of the scheme to which he was devoting himself—and from a boy so like the dead Christ he was working to blot out of worship he seemed the Christ arisen!

      The amazement passed slowly, and with its going the habitual shrewdness and capacity to make servants of circumstances apparently the most untoward returned. The youth had intellect, impressiveness, aptitude in words, and a sublime idea. But what of his spirit— his courage— his endurance in the Faith?

      “How came this doctrine to thee?”

      The Prince spoke deferentially.

      “From the good father Hilarion.”

      “Who is he?”

      “The Archimandrite of Bielo-Osero.”

      “A monastery?”

      “Yes.”

      “How did he receive it?”

      “From the Spirit of God, whence Christ had his wisdom—whence all good men have their goodness—by virtue of which they, like Him, become sons of God.”

      “What is thy name?”

      “Sergius.”

      “Sergius”—the Prince, now fully recovered, exerted his power of will—“Sergius, thou art a heretic.”

      At this accusation, so terrible in those days, the monk raised the rosary of large beads dangling from his girdle, kissed the cross, and stood surveying the accuser with pity.

      “That is,” the Prince continued with greater severity, “speak thou thus to the Patriarch yonder”—he waved a hand toward Constantinople—“dare repeat the saying to a commission appointed to try thee for heresy, and thou wilt thyself taste the pangs of crucifixion or be cast to the beasts.”

      The monk arose to his great height, and replied, fervently:

      “Knowest thou when death hath the sweetness of sleep? I will tell thee “—A light certainly not from the narrow aperture in the wall collected upon his countenance, and shone visibly—“It is when a martyr dies knowing both of God’s hands are a pillow under his head.”

      The Prince dropped his eyes, for he was asking himself, was such sweetness of sleep appointed for him? Resuming his natural manner, he said: “I understand thee, Sergius. Probably no man in the world, go thou East or West, will ever understand thee better. God’s hands under my head, welcome death!—Let us be friends.”

      Sergius took his offered hand.

      Just then there was a noise at the door, and a troop of servants entered with lighted lamps, rugs, a table, stools, and beds and bedding, and it was not long until the apartment was made habitable. The Prince, otherwise well satisfied, wanted nothing then but a reply from Mirza; and in the midst of his wonder at the latter’s delay, a page in brilliant costume appeared, and called out:

      “The Emir Mirza!”