Meanwhile he was a nobody, a young gentleman merely, who might
have moved in the best society, and who preferred the worst--his
own. The sudden elevation of Vespasian preoccupied him, and while
he knew that in the natural course of events his father would move
to Olympus, yet there was his brother Titus, on whose broad
shoulders the mantle of purple would fall. If the seditious Jews
only knew their business! But no. Forty years before a white
apparition on the way to Golgotha had cried to a handful of women,
"The days are coming in which they shall say to the mountains,
'Fall on us'; to the hills, 'Cover us.'" And the days had come. A
million of them had been butchered. From the country they had fled
to the city; from Acra they had climbed to Zion. When the city
burst into flames their blood put it out. Decidedly they did not
know their business. Titus, instead of being stabbed before
Jerusalem's walls, was marching in triumph to Rome.
The procession that presently entered the gates was a stream of
splendor; crowns of rubies and gold; garments that glistened with
gems; gods on their sacred pedestals; prisoners; curious beasts;
Jerusalem in miniature; pictures of war; booty from the Temple,
the veil, the candelabra, the cups of gold and the Book of the
Law. To the rear rumbled the triumphal car, in which laurelled and
mantled Titus stood, Vespasian at his side; while, in the
distance, on horseback, came Domitian--a supernumerary, ignored by
the crowd.
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