  Paul discourses solemnly before Felix and his queen Drusilla, treating the topics of righteousness, self-control, and impending judgment. The effect is to make Felix show visible signs of discomposure on his judgment-seat. Drusilla, apprehensive of consequences disastrous to herself from her wicked husband's awakened remorse and fear, invokes the intervention of Simon, that Cyprian Jewish sorcerer who had at first been instrumental in bringing the guilty pair together. Simon plays upon the superstition of Felix with his pretended magic arts. PAUL BEFORE FELIX. The power of the Most High, descending, fell On Paul, as, led of soldiers, he came in, Bound, at the mercy of the governor, And took his station in that presence proud. At once, but without observation, changed Became the parts of Felix and of Paul. Paul, from a prisoner of Felix, now To Felix was as captor and as judge; And Felix was as prisoner, bound, to Paul. Paul his right hand in manacles stretched forth, As if it were a scepter that he swayed, And said: "Most excellent lord Felix, hear, And thou, Drusilla, unto Felix spouse! Obedient, at thy bidding, I am come To make thee know the faith in Jesus Christ, And wherefore I obey it, and proclaim. Know, then, that Jesus, He of Nazareth, The Crucified of Calvary, is Christ, The Christ of that Jehovah God Most High Who by His word created heaven and earth, God was incarnate in Him here on earth, To reconcile the world unto Himself; And I beseech men—I, ambassador From Him, as if the Lord God did by me Beseech—beseeching them, 'Be reconciled To God.' "For all men everywhere are found By wicked works God's enemies; on all, God's wrath, weight insupportable, abides; A message this, that down from heaven He brought, That Christ of God, that Savior of the world. But His atonement lifts the load of wrath, Which down toward hell the sinking spirit weighed, Lifts, nay, transmutes it to a might of love, Which bears the spirit soaring up to heaven. 'Believe in Jesus, and be reconciled To God'; that is the gospel which I preach. Obey my gospel, and be saved—rebel, And pray the mountains to fall down on thee To hide thee from the wrath of God, and hide Thee from the wrath, more dreadful, of the Lamb. For Lamb was Jesus, when on Calvary Resurgent from the tomb, above all height Into the heaven of heavens He rose, and sat On the right hand of glory and of power With God, then the Lamb slain from far before The world was founded, by His blood our guilt To purge, as capable of wrath became, As He before was capable of love. He burns against unrighteousness, in flame Which, kindling on the wicked, them devours. There is no quenching of that fearful flame, As ending none is there of what it burns; The victim lives immortally, to feed The immortal hunger of that vengeful flame. It swifter than the living lightning flies, To fasten on its victim in his flight; No refuge is there in the universe For fugitive from it. Thou, Felix, knowest No hider can elude the ranging eyes, No runner can outrun the wingÉd feet, No striver can resist the griping hands, That to the emperor of the world belong; Whom CÆsar wishes, CÆsar has for prey." Paul fixed his gaze point-blank on Felix while These things he said, not as with personal aim— Which might have been resented, being such, Resented, and thereby avoided quite— Rather as if, through body, he beheld His hearer's soul, and set it with his eyes Far forward into the eternal world, And there saw the fierce flame he spoke of, fast Adhering or inhering, burn that soul, With burning unescapable by flight Or refuge through the universe of God. Paul's vision was so vivid that his eyes Imprinted what he saw upon the soul Of Felix, that almost he saw it too. He stared and listened, with that thought intense Wherewith sometimes the overmastering mind Will blind the eyesight and the hearing blur. A sense of insecurity in power, Bred in him by his consciousness of crime, With dread, too, of the moment, then perhaps Already nigh! when that omnipotence, That omnipresence, that omniscience, Rome's, Might beset him, to cut him off from hope— Like struggling earthquake, to unsettle him; Thus weakened, half unconsciously, his will Fell childlike-helpless in the power of Paul. Now fear hath torment, and to Felix, prey Of fear with torment, Paul still added fear; Perhaps his fear intolerable grown Might save the sufferer from the thing he feared! Paul further said: "O Felix, CÆsar's sway Over this world, inevitable thus, Subduing all, is yet but image pale Of the supreme dominion absolute Which to Christ Jesus in the heaven belongs. The captives of the emperor need but wait Patient a while and sure release arrives; Since death at least, to all, or soon or late, Comes, one escape at last from CÆsar's power, Who owns no empire in that world beyond. But of that world beyond, no end, no bound, Whither we all must flee in fleeing hence, Still the Lord Christ abides eternal King; Death is but door to realm of His more wide. Here, the sheathed sword of His avenging ire Will sometimes touch, undrawn, with blunted edge, That knows himself a criminal unjudged. Those touches are the mercy of the Lord That would betimes the guilty soul alarm; Those pains of conscience are the smouldering fires Which, quenched not now in sin-atoning blood, Will, blown to fury, by and by burst forth, And, fuelled of the substance of the soul, That cannot moult its immortality, One inextinguishable vengeance burn. "'Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings, be ye Instructed, judges of the earth;' so God Cries in our Scriptures in the ears of men. 'Kiss ye the Son,' He says, 'in homage kiss The Son of Mine anointing, Christ the Lord, Kiss Him lest He be angry, and His wrath Ready to be enkindled you devour. But in the living scriptures of the soul Itself, the holy word of God in man, The selfsame admonition beats and burns— If men would read it and would understand! The raging of desire not satisfied, The sickness of the surfeit of desire, And waste of being, by itself consumed, To bury or deface what else were fair— Like lava spouted from the crater's mouth Of the volcano burning its own bowels To belch them torrent over fertile fields— These things, O Felix, in the conscious heart, Are muffled footfalls of oncoming doom." Peculiar commination seemed to flame, Volcanic, in Paul's manner as he spoke. One might have felt the figure prophecy— For some fulfilment in this present world Impending to be symbol of his thought— His likening of the self-consuming soul, Disgorging desolation round about, To a volcano its own entrails burning, And in eruption pouring them abroad; So real, so living, so in imminent act, Paul's speaking made his fiery simile. Drusilla, when, long after, with her son Agrippa, born to Felix, overwhelmed In that destruction from Vesuvius Which under ashen rain and lava flood Like Sodom and Gomorrah whelmed again!— Drusilla then, despairing, for one fierce Fleet instant—instant endless, though so fleet— Saw, as from picture branded on her brain, Heard, as from echo hoarded in its cells, The very image of the speaker's form, His posture, gesture, features in their play, These, and the tones, reliving, of the voice Wherewith, in CÆsarea judgment-hall, He fulmined, yea, as if this self-same wo! But Paul, no pause, immitigably said: "Belshazzar, Babylonian king of old, Once in a season of high festival Held in his palace with a thousand lords, Saw visionary fingers of a hand Come out upon the palace walls and write. Then that king's countenance was changed in him, In answer to the trouble of his thoughts; The very jointings of his loins were loosed, And his knees, shaken, on each other smote. In language that he did not understand, But prophet Daniel told the sense to him, Thus, O lord Felix, in our hours of feast, Oft, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, Dread warning to us that the end is come, That we have been full proved and wanting found, That now our vantage must another's be— Appalling words of final doom from God, In lurid letters live along the walls Of the soul's pleasure-house—for who will heed! Remorses, doubts, recoils, forebodings, fears, And fearful lookings for of judgment nigh, Previsions flashed on the prophetic soul Refusing to be hooded not to see— These are handwritings on the wall from God; They, syllabling the sentence of His ire, Spell MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, For pleasure-lovers lost in lust and pride. Well for Belshazzar, if betimes he heed!" Had Felix been alone, deep in the dark, And a wide waste of solitude around, A comfort it had seemed to him to loose One mighty agitation of his frame And shiver his blood-curdling terror off; Shriek it into the startled universe. But, seated there upon his throne of power, Drusilla by his side regarding him, To tremble, like a culprit being judged, Before a culprit waiting judgment! He, With last resistant agony of will, Kept moveless his blanched lips, and on his seat Sat stricken upright, and so stared at Paul. There Paul stood tranquil, choosing thunderbolts, And this the thunderbolt that last he launched: "Hearken, O Felix. In the clouds of heaven, Attended by the angels of His might, The Lord Christ Jesus I behold descend. The trumpet of the resurrection sounds, And sea and land give up their wakened dead; These all to judgment hasten at His call: The books are opened and the witness found; All the least thoughts of men, with all their words And deeds, all their dumb motions of desire, Their purposes, and their endeavors all, Are written in the record of those books. They blaze out in the light of that great day. Deem not one guilty can his guilt conceal. A parting of the evil and the good; The good at His right hand He bids sit down, The awful Judge, omnipotent as just; The evil, frowning, bids from Him depart. Swift, them departing—who would not know God, And not obey the gospel of His Son— He, taking vengeance, follows in their flight With flaming fire and dreadful punishment, Destruction everlasting from His face, From the Lord's face, and glory of His power!" The shudder that had slept uneasy sleep Within the breast of Felix lulling it, Woke startled at these minatory words Spoken as with the voice of God by Paul. That couchant shudder from its ambush broke, And openly ran wantoning over all The members of the terror-stricken man. But the cry clamoring in him for escape, To ease the anguish of his mortal fear, Felix found strength to modulate to this, In forced tones uttered, and with failing breath: Hereafter I will call for thee again." The soldier duly led his prisoner out, And Felix was full easily rid of Paul; Of Paul, but of Paul's haunting presence not The image of that orator in chains, The solemn echo of the words he spoke, Swam before Felix, sounded in his ears, So real, the real world round him seemed less real. Drusilla, to her discomposure, found Her husband strangely alien from his spouse; The blandishments so potent with him late Lost on an absent or repellent mind. The awe of Felix under Paul's discourse She had remarked with unconcerned surprise. She now recalled it with a doubt, a fear. The jealous thought woke in her: 'If my lord Should, overwrought in conscience, cast me off! What byword and what hissing then were I, Stranded and branded an adulteress! I, who the scion of a kingly house, Haughty Antiochus Epiphanes, Haughtily spurned as suitor for my hand, Who wedded then Azizus, eastern king, Willing to win me at the price I fixed; Who next with scandal parted from his bed, To snatch this dazzle of a Roman spouse— I to be now by him flung to the dogs! All at the beck of an apostate Jew, Arraigned a culprit at his judgment-bar! Drusilla, rouse thee, say, It must not be! Drusilla, arm thee, swear, It shall not be!' She summoned straight that Cyprian sorcerer who Had played the pander's part between herself And Felix, when they twain at first were brought In guilt together. "Simon, know," she said, "I with cause hate this Jewish prisoner Paul. He, insolence intolerable, is fain To come between my Roman lord and me. Withstand him, and undo his hateful spell." "His hateful spell, O stately queen, my liege," Said Simon, "I far rather would assay Unbinding from thy spouse's soul enthralled, Than him withstand, the binder of that spell, Of Cyprus, Elymas, a master mind In magic—at the court proconsular Of Sergius Paulus, regent of the isle, Wielding great power—withstood this self-same Paul. But Paul denounced a curse deipotent Against him, and forthwith upon his eyes A mist fell and a darkness, that he walked Wandering in quest of one to lead him, late Redoubtable magician, by the hand. This conjuration on the conjurer, Himself proconsul Sergius Paulus saw, And, overpowered with wonder and with fear, Roman and governor as he was, became Fast docile dupe and devotee to Paul. "Perhaps indeed there was a cause for this Older in date than such a feat of Paul's. Long years before, when Paul and he were young, By chance they fared together on the way Damascus-ward out of Jerusalem, When, nigh Damascus, of a sudden, Paul On Sergius tried a novel magic trick. Above him, burning all that tract of sand, He flashed a sheen of mimic lightning forth, With stage effect of thunder overhead Muttering words. Thereon as dead fell Paul, Yet to that unintelligible voice From heaven intelligible answer made, Pretending dialogue with some unseen High dweller in the upper air, with whom Colluding, he thenceforth his spells of power Might surer, deadlier, fling on whom he would. Sergius was then too full of youth to yield; The lusty blood in him fought off the spell; But somewhat wrought upon, no less, was he, And secretly, in mind and will, prepared To fall in weaker age a prey to Paul. A potent master Paul is in his kind, Owning some secret from us others hid, That makes our vaunts against him void and vain. I would not needlessly his curse provoke By too close quarters with him front to front. His spell on Felix I may hope to solve, Let me but have thy husband by himself, I will see Felix, but Paul let me shun." So Simon to his moody master went, And, well dispensing with preamble, said: "What will mine excellent lord Felix please Command the service of his servant in?" "Unbidden thou art present," Felix frowned. "So bidden I retire," the mage replied. "Nay, tarry," with quick wanton veer of whim, Said Felix, "tarry and declare to me, If with exertion of thy skill thou canst, What is it that this hour perturbs my thought? Answer me that, pretender to be wise, Or own thy weird pretensions nothing worth. No paltering, no evasion, doubling none In ambiguity like oracle, But instant, honest, simple, true reply; Else, I have done with all thy trumpery tricks, Haply, too, with some certain fruits thereof That thee buy little thanks, as me small joy." "My master pleases to make hard demand, In couple with condition hard, to-day," The sorcerer, with dissembled pleasure, said. For, in an antechamber to the hall Of judgment, he, with Shimei too, had lurked, And, overhearing Paul's denouncement, marked The trepidation of the judge's mien. "Lord Felix suffers from an evil spell Cast on him by a wicked conjurer;" So, with deep calculation of effect, The sorcerer to the sovereign firmly said. "A hit—perhaps," said Felix, some relief Of tension to his conscience-crowded mind Welcoming already in the hint conveyed; "Repeat to me," he added, keen to hear, "Repeat to me the phrasing of the spell; That I may know it not a groping guess, But certain knowledge, what thou thus hast said." That challenge flung to Simon's hand the clue He needed for his guidance in the maze. He sees the Roman's superstitious mind In grapple with imaginative awe Infused by recollection of those words Barbaric—of comminatory sound, Though understood not, therefore dreaded more— Had solemnly recited in his ear. "The spell," he said, "O Felix, that enthralls Thee was of three ChaldÆan words composed; But one word was repeated, making four. I dare not utter those dire syllables In the fixed order which creates the spell. My wish is to undo, and not to bind." Felix was frightened, like a little child Told ghostly stories in the dead of night; He watched and waited, with set eye intense. The conjurer, standing in struck attitude, Made with his voice an inarticulate sign Intoned in tone to thrill the listening blood. Thereon, in silence, through the opening door, With gliding motion, a familiar stole Into the chamber, which now more and more, To Felix's impressionable fears, As if a vestibule to Hades was. That noiseless minister to Simon gave Into his master's hand a rod prepared. "Hearken, lord Felix," low the conjurer said, "Hearken and heed. Well needs it thou, with me, Hear thou aright, while I aright reverse The order of the phrasing of that spell. Beware thou think it even no otherwise Than as I give it, weighing word and word. I turn the sentence end for end about, UPHARSIN, TEKEL, MENE, MENE, say; All is not done, still keep thy mind intent, And, with thine eyes now, as erst with thine ears, Watch what I do, and let thy will consent." Therewith his wizard wand he waved in air, As who wrote viewless words upon the wind. A hollow reed the wand he wielded was, With secret seed asleep of fire enclosed. This, at the end that in his hand he held; Powder of sulphur at the other end Was hidden in the hollow of the reed. The sulphur and the fire, unconscious each Of other, had, though neighboring, since apart, Slept; for the sorcerer's minion brought the rod, As first the sorcerer held it, levelled true. But with the motion of the magian's hand, The dipping virgule sent the ember down And breath let in to blow it living red, Until it touched the sulphur at the tip. Issue of fume there followed, edged with flame, Which, woven in circlet and in crescent, seemed To knit a melting legend on the air. "So vanish and be not, thou hateful spell, And leave this late so vexÉd spirit free!" With mutter of which words, the sorcerer turned To Felix, and thus farther spoke: "Breathe thou, Lord Felix, from that bond emancipate. Yet, that thou fall not unawares again Beneath its power, use well a countercharm I give thee, which, both night and day, wear thou A prophylactic to thy menaced mind. Gold—let the thought, the motive, the desire, The purpose, and the fancy, and the dream, Not leave thee nor forsake thee till thou die. The sight, the sound, the touch, the clutch, of gold Is sovereign absolution to a soul Beset like thine with fear of things to be Beyond the limit of this mortal state; But, failing that, the thought itself will serve. If thou wouldst live a freeman in thy mind." 'Freedman,' he would have said, but did not dare; He had dared much already in his word, 'Freeman,' so nigh overt allusion glanced At the opprobrious quality of slave, Out of which Felix sprang to be a king. To that, contempt and hatred of a lord Served but from hard self-interest and from fear Had irresistibly pressed Simon on Beyond the bound of calculated speech. Therewith, and waiting not dismissal, both, The sorcerer and his minion, silently Slid out of presence, and left Felix there To rally as he might to his true self. But, not too trustful to his sorcery, Simon thought well to follow and confirm The influence won on Felix through his art, With worldly wisdom suited to his end. He bade Drusilla open all access Ever for Shimei to her husband's ear, And even from her own treasure help him ply Felix's avid mind with hope of gold— An ample guerdon in due time to come From Paul's rich friends to buy release for Paul. At CÆsarea, in the judgment hall That day, a solemn crisis of his life, To Felix, he not knowing, there had passed. Successfully, with sad success! he had Resisted conscience in her last attempt, Her last and greatest, to alarm a soul Sufficiently to save it from itself. At length, with the still process of the days Dulled, and besides with opiate medicines drugged, That conscience, so resisted, sank asleep, Sank dead asleep in Felix, to awake Never again. He indeed sent for Paul Afterward oft, and talked with him at large; But always only in that sordid hope— Blown to fresh flame with seasonable breath, That never failed, from Shimei, prompt in watch To play on his cupidity—the hope Of princely ransom from his prisoner won. Such hope, so kept alive, led this bad man— Although he hated Paul for shaking him Of terror, in his very pitch of pride— To palter with his prisoner, month by month, Until the end came of his long misrule. Then, hope deferred, defeated hope at last, Let loose the hatred that in leash had lain Of avarice, in the kennel of that breast, And Felix found a sullen feast for it In leaving Paul at CÆsarea bound.
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