the Lord Sejanus preferring a reasonable
gain in the way of gift to much gain fished from pools of blood
and wrong; tell him if all this were not so, if the money and
property were all mine, yet should he not have the least part
of it, for when he finds our Jewish bills, and forces them to
give up their values, there is yet another resort left me--a
deed of gift to Caesar--so much, O Egypt, I found out in the
atria of the great capital; tell him that along with my defiance
I do not send him a curse in words, but, as a better expression of
my undying hate, I send him one who will prove to him the sum of
all curses; and when he looks at you repeating this my message,
daughter of Balthasar, his Roman shrewdness will tell him all I
mean. Go now--and I will go."

He conducted her to the door, and, with ceremonious politeness,
held back the curtain while she passed out.

"Peace to you," he said, as she disappeared.

CHAPTER VII

When Ben-Hur left the guest-chamber, there was not nearly so much
life in his action as when he entered it; his steps were slower,
and he went along with his head quite upon his breast. Having made
discovery that a man with a broken back may yet have a sound brain,
he was reflecting upon the discovery.

Forasmuch as it is easy after a calamity has befallen to look back
and see the proofs of its coming strewn along the way, the thought
that he had not even suspected the Egyptian as in Messala's interest,
but had gone blindly on through whole years putting himself and
his friends more and more at her mercy, was a sore wound to the
young man's vanity. "I remember," he said to himself, "she had
no word of indignation for the perfidious Roman at the Fountain
of Castalia! I remember she extolled him at the boat-ride on the
lake in the Orchard of Palms! And, ah!"--he stopped, and beat
his left hand violently with his right--"ah! that mystery about
the appointment she made with me at the Palace of Idernee is no
mystery now!"

The wound, it should be observed, was to his vanity; and fortunately
it is not often that people die of such hurts, or even continue a long
time sick. In Ben-Hur's case, moreover, there was a compensation;
for presently he exclaimed aloud, "Praised be the Lord God that the
woman took not a more lasting hold on me! I see I did not love her."

Then, as if he had already parted with not a little of the weight
on his mind, he stepped forward more lightly; and, coming to the