"
"Now, by the five corners of my beard!" shouted the Pharisee, who
belonged to the sect called The Dashers (that little knot of saints
whose manner of dashing and lacerating the feet against the pavement
was long a thorn and a reproach to less zealous devotees- a
stumbling-block to less gifted perambulators)- "by the five corners
of that beard which, as a priest, I am forbidden to shave!- have we
lived to see the day when a blaspheming and idolatrous upstart of Rome
shall accuse us of appropriating to the appetites of the flesh the
most holy and consecrated elements? Have we lived to see the day
when-"
"Let us not question the motives of the Philistine," interrupted
Abel-Phittim, "for to-day we profit for the first time by his
avarice or by his generosity, but rather let us hurry to the ramparts,
lest offerings should be wanting for that altar whose fire the rains
of heaven cannot extinguish, and whose pillars of smoke no tempest can
turn aside."
That part of the city to which our worthy Gizbarin now hastened, and
which bore the name of its architect, King David, was esteemed the
most strongly fortified district of Jerusalem; being situated upon the
steep and lofty hill of Zion. Here, a broad, deep, circumvallatory
trench, hewn from the solid rock, was defended by a wall of great
strength erected upon its inner edge.
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