Great Lion of God by Taylor Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page B

you tell me what you are?”
    David had turned very pale. A thin shaft of brilliant sunshine illuminated the side of his face and for the first time Hillel saw that his profile was classic Greek in the short curled upper lip, the round full chin, the marble contour of cheek, and that his coloring enhanced the resemblance. He was suddenly ashamed, and for the first time, that his brother-in-law had been so insulted in his house.
    David was gazing at the old man and deep in his blue eyes something like a spark was rising. But before he could speak Reb Isaac continued in his harsh and cawing voice: “My sorrow is with you, David ben Shebua, for the sin is on your father’s head and not on yours. When a man robs his son of his heritage, out of exigency or conceit or vanity or eagerness to be as others, he has done a fearful . He has taken certitude from his son, his identity in the nameless mob, the integrity of his soul, his joy in what he is and to what he has been born. He has taken pride from him, and without pride a man is less than a man. Do the Greeks accept you as a Greek, the Romans as a Roman? You cannot rejoice in the name of Israel, for you have spurned her, as your father taught you, for some vague citizenship you call the world. The Roman world! It belongs only to Romans, and not to you, not the Greeks or any of the other abundant races which inhabit this earth. This they know, and have their own identity, which you have not.”
    True, thought Aristo. I was a slave, and am now only a freedman, but I am also a Greek with a glorious heritage behind me, and therefore I am a man above all other things.
    Hillel said, circumventing the very pale David, “What a man chooses is his own, and because it is his own, however we may protest it, we must respect it also. There may be a deeper allegiance than nation, or even heritage, and it may be that David possesses it.”
    “You speak nonsense in your beard, and you know it is nonsense!” cried Reb Isaac, turning the black glitter of his eyes on his host. He swung his heavy shoulders under their rough robes of brown linen to David. “Tell me,” he said in a loud and peremptory tone, “and I will listen and will weigh your words and not scorn them. Tell me, what is your allegiance?”
    Then David said, “To peace.” He stopped, astonished at his own words, and then his face vividly quickened as if he had come upon some truth unknown even to himself, which he had believed and had not known he had believed. “I do not speak of supine submission, not even to the Roman, though we must recognize that he rules the world and resistance is death, or worse. We must remember Pompey, in our recent history, and our Herods. Is it not said in the Scriptures that when the storm breaks the unbending tree is broken, but the bending grass lives for another day and another storm? Let me think a moment! I am a man of peace, and peace is not to be despised. I do not speak of the peace of the slave, but of the peace a man experiences when he accepts the inevitable, which he cannot move. He must make his peace with reality. That does not bring a loss of pride. Once possessed of that tranquillity, a man can again live with dignity and even find worthiness in life. He can rediscover thought. It is civilization at its highest, and I hope I am a civilized man.”
    Reb Isaac has listened with all the power of his mind and spirit. A strange expression began to move his blackly bearded face, and now there was comprehension on it, and pity as well as wrath. “It is a compromise,” he said. “There are men who will not compromise out of principle or love of God, and will die for their fortitude. And there are men of another nature who must compromise. They have my compassion.”
    Hillel had been struck by David’s words, and he said, “There is nothing wrong with compromise, if the choice is between the evil of accepting reality and the evil of fantasy. Reality, however repulsive, is truth. It