Page 14 - lw3164

ACT III, TABLEAU 1.

ROOM IN THE HOUSE OF Simonides IN ANTIOCH.

" Listen then. It may not have escaped thy memory that
I once gave thee an account of how there came to me, in my
tents in the desert, now nearly thirty years since, three strangers
-wise men from three different countries, fleeing for their lives
from Herod, and seeking protection.
"They had been led by a wondrous star in the East, one
from Egypt, one from the land of the Greeks, and one from
farthest Ind ; and, guided by the star, they had found in a village
of Judea a child who was borne King of the Jews. Such, at least,
their tale.''

" From that night I was no longer a slave, save to the kind-
ness of Arrius, who adopted me as his son. He would have made
of me a Roman, and a Roman soldier; and fain was I to learn of
the conqueror how I might, haply, conquer in turn. Hence the
garb in which thou seest me. Nothing did he deny me, save the
one thing my heart most hungered for- leave to search for my
people. That, with more than a father's jealousy, and with all
his Roman pride, he forbade. And so close were the bonds in
which he held me that, while he lived, Rome was my prison. He
is dead - and my search is begun. And now, speak. Hast thou
aught to tell me? Or must I fare farther?"