x received a commission from Antiochus to attack
and seize a party of Hebrews who, according to information brought by
spies, were to celebrate the Passover Feast in Salathiel's house, in
defiance of the edict by which the king had endeavoured to crush the
religion of those who still worshipped the God of their fathers.

An office more repugnant to the feelings of Pollux could scarcely have
been assigned to him, but he dared not show the slightest hesitation in
obeying the mandate; nay, the courtier even feigned joy at the
opportunity given him of serving the king by rooting out the religion
which, in the secret depths of his heart, Pollux regarded as the only
true one; for he could not obliterate from memory lessons once learned
on his mother's knee. The poor wretch was, as it were, sunk in the
quicksand up to his lips, and would have clutched at red-hot iron, had
such been the only means of drawing him upwards out of the living grave
in which he was being gradually entombed.

Wearing the mask of mirth to conceal his misery, Pollux, before setting
out on his hateful mission, jested in regard to the number of fanatic
Jews whom he would enclose in his toils, and bring to make sport before
the king, to fight wild beasts in the large gymnasium, which had been
erected within Jerusalem for games which the Jews regarded as unlawful
and sinful. The courtier, in the presence of Antiochus, affected the
gay delight of the hunter, trying to cover with a garb of levity the
remorse which was gnawing at his heart, and not betray even by a look,
the secret torture which he felt.

We know what followed the attack upon Salathiel's house: the flight of
the Hebrews, the fall of Abishai, whose last word and dying look
inflicted upon Pollux a pang keen enough to have satisfied the fiercest
thirst for revenge.

When tidings were brought to the palace that the result of the boasted
exertions of Pollux was the death of a single Hebrew and the capture of
one young girl, the wrath of the tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes rose higher
than before. His courtiers, catching the infection of the anger of the
king, showed something of what would have been the indignant rage of an
audience crowding the Coliseum at Rome in the expectation of gloating
on the sight of many victims flung to the lions, had the spectacle been
reduced to the sacrifice of one.

Antiochus, however, determined to have what sport he could out of the
single poor gazelle that had b