Judith, a play in three acts | Page 2

Bethulia.
CHABRIS. You are responsible for this city?
OZIAS. I am.
CHABRIS. Now I understand my misfortune. And the truth was in me
when I said to your mother as she lay dying: Better it is to die without
children than to have them that are ungodly.
OZIAS. Oh! How comely a thing is the judgment of grey hairs!
CHABRIS. You ask me what has brought me at last out of my house. I
will tell you. Thirst! Thirst has brought me out of my house. Every
morning and every evening my great-grandchild serves me with pulse
and water. For five days she has furnished less and less water, and this
day--not a drop! Can one eat pulse without water to drink? Half an hour
ago I went to her to reason with her, and she lay on her bed cracked,
and raved that she herself had not drunk for three days and that there
was no water left in all Bethulia. So I came at last out of my house into
the streets of this city famous for its cool fountains which never fail.
And lo! I meet the governor of this city, and he is Ozias! Ozias! Seven
days do men mourn for him that is dead, but for an ungodly man all the
days of his life! Why is there no water in Bethulia, sprig?
OZIAS. Old man, meditation is good and solitude is good, but think not
because you sit staring all day at your own belly that the sun and stars
have ceased to revolve round the earth and the kings of this world to
make war. Is it possible that you do not know what has happened?
CHABRIS. I only know that I cannot eat pulse without water to drink.
OZIAS. Bethulia is besieged.
CHABRIS. Who is besieging Bethulia?

OZIAS. Holofernes.
CHABRIS. I have never heard his name. Who is he?
OZIAS. Never heard the name of the chief captain of Nebuchadnezzar?
Have you heard the name of Nebuchadnezzar, by chance?
CHABRIS. I seem to remember it.
OZIAS. Come up here. (_They go up the steps to the vantage-point_.)
Look! A hundred and twenty thousand foot-soldiers. Twelve thousand
archers on horseback. Oxen and sheep for their provisions. Twenty
thousand asses for their carriages. Camels without number. Infinite
victuals; and very much gold and silver. The like was never seen
before.
CHABRIS (stepping down.) Why has Nebuchadnezzar set about this
thing? What harm has Bethulia done to him?
OZIAS. Much harm. Nebuchadnezzar has decided to be God. He has
decreed that all nations and tribes shall call upon him as God. And he
has conquered the whole earth, excepting only Judea; and Bethulia is
the gate into Judea, and Bethulia has not listened to his decree, and I
am the governor of Bethulia. So Nebuchadnezzar the great king is very
angry and Holofernes is the tool of his wrath.
CHABRIS (going up the steps again and gazing.) How many did you
say?
OZIAS. A hundred and twenty thousand foot and twelve thousand
horse.
CHABRIS. At any rate this will be the last war.
OZIAS. Why?
CHABRIS. Why! Because plainly war cannot continue on such a scale.
Or if it does, mankind is destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar has rendered war
ridiculous.

OZIAS _(laughs; then half to himself, sarcastically)._ What is heavier
than lead, and what is the name thereof, but an aged fool?
CHABRIS (_descending again, self-centred_). It remains that I cannot
eat pulse without water to drink. (To Ozias.) And surely Bethulia has
more wells than any other city of Judea.
OZIAS. The wells are at the foot of the hills, and Holofernes has seized
them all.
CHABRIS. That is not fighting.
OZIAS. It is war.
CHABRIS. No, no! In my time soldiers fought fairly.
OZIAS. And killed each other. Why should Holofernes sacrifice
thousands of lives to take the heights when he can reach the same result
by letting his men sit still and watch?
CHABRIS. I say this is not war. Once I travelled many days to
Nineveh. It is a city of extravagance, and when I beheld its mad,
new-fangled ways, I knew that the last day was nigh. I was right. Three
thousand and five hundred years since Jehovah created Adam, and Eve
from his rib ... Too long! Too long! And what is pulse without water? I
must have water.
OZIAS. It is thirty-four days since Holofernes took the wells. If you
have received water up to yesterday your great-grandchild must indeed
have thirsted that you might drink. I have distributed water by measure,
but now the cisterns are empty, and women and young men fall down
in the streets, and there is no water in Bethulia. We are all in like case,
the high and the lowly.
CHABRIS. Then give me your bottle.