The wrath and grief of my kinsmen were without bounds. Every defile of the mountains was searched—every straggler seized; messengers were despatched across the frontier with offers of ransom to the chiefs of the desert, in case my family should have escaped the sword. Threats of severe retaliation were used by the Roman governor of the province; all was in vain. The only intelligence was from a shepherd, who, two nights before, had seen a troop which he supposed to be Arabs, ride swiftly by the gates of Kuriathim, our nearest city; but this intelligence only added to the misfortune. The habits of those robbers were proverbially savage; they lived by the torch and the sword; they slaughtered the men without mercy; the females they generally sold into endless captivity. To leave no trace of their route, they slaughtered the captives whom they could not carry through their hurried marches. To leave no trace of what they had done, they burned the place of massacre. But this ruin was from other and more malignant hands! CHAPTER XIII _The Wandering of a Mind Diseased_ [Sidenote: The Tyranny of Imagination] What I might have suffered in the agony of a bereaved husband and father was spared me. My visitation was of another kind; dreadful, yet perhaps not so preeminently wretched, nor so deeply striking at the roots of life. My brain had received an overwhelming blow.[20] Imagination was to be my tyrant; and every occurrence of life, every aspect of humanity, every variety of nature, day and night, sunshine and storm, made a portion of its fearful empire. What is insanity but a more vivid and terrible dream? It has the dream-like tumult of events, the rapidity of transit, the quick invention, the utter disregard of place and time. The difference lies in its intensity. The madman is awake; and the open eye administers a horrid reality to the fantastic vision. The vigor of the senses gives a living and resistless strength to the vagueness of the fancy; it compels together the fleeting mists of the mind, and embodies them into shapes of deadly power. I was mad! but all my madness was not painful. Books, my old delight, still lulled my mind. I turned the pages of some volume; then fancy waved her wand, and built upon its contents a world of adventure. Every language appeared to open treasures to me. I roved through all lands; I saw all those eminent in rank or genius; I drank of the fountains of poetry; I addressed listening senates, and heard the air echo with applause. Wit, beauty, talent, laid their inestimable tributes at my feet. I was exalted to the highest triumphs of mind; and then came my fate. In the midst of my glory came a cloud, and I was miserable. This bitter sense of defeat was a characteristic of my visions. Be the cup ever so sweet, it had a poison drop at bottom. [Sidenote: Salathiel in the Past]