And the rough soldiery, paying little respect either to her womanhood or to her rank, drove her down the steps of the tribunal.[13] * * * * * Night fell, calm and beautiful. The Syrian stars looked down upon the tribunal, whose stones, could they have spoken, might have told how, thirty years before, a wicked populace had cried, “_His blood be on us, and on our children!_” That self-invoked curse was working out its fulfillment. There, on the very spot where those words had been uttered, stood a multitude of crosses, each lifting a ghastly victim to the midnight sky! CHAPTER XI “TO YOUR TENTS, O ISRAEL!” During the massacre instigated by Florus, a massacre that numbered no less than three thousand six hundred victims, Crispus, by nature of the case, had been compelled to look helplessly on. Side with the Roman troops he could not; to side with the Jews would have been unpatriotic. His attempt at mediation met, like that of Berenice, with an insulting repulse from the procurator. Burning with indignation, he retired to the Turris Antonia and addressed to his father a letter describing the disgrace that had been brought upon the Roman name by Florus, and urging the Legate to come at once with a legion and restore order in Jerusalem by the only method possible, the deposition of the wicked procurator. This letter, when finished, he dispatched to Antioch by the hand of a swift courier. Florus, having given ample ground for rebellion, proceeded, in pursuance of the same sinister policy, to take his departure, withdrawing all his troops save one cohort, and that a divided one, half being allotted to the Prætorium, and half to Antonia. Never did the baseness of Florus’ character appear more than in this, the final act of his official career. He knew that, in the present excited state of the city, garrisons so slender would offer an irresistible temptation to the seditious. But what cared he for the Romans whom he was leaving behind? If the garrisons were massacred, why, so much the better for his purpose. As Florus looked back upon the city he was leaving he might have said with a nobler Roman than himself, “Mischief, thou art afoot; take what course thou wilt.”[14] Among the troops ordered to leave Jerusalem upon this occasion was the Italian Cohort of Rufus, who, however great his dislike of the procurator, had, as a loyal soldier, no other course than to do as he was bidden. Crispus, determined to remain in the city, betook himself to the Prætorium, and offered his services to its commandant Metilius, who was glad to welcome any auxiliary, and especially one like Crispus, whose suggestions for the defense of the palace were not only original, but, what is more, practicable.