She crouched behind the shelter of her pinnacle gasping for breath.

She prayed that she might die, and could not.

Now she remembered the drink that remained in the leathern bottle, and swallowed it to the last drop.

Then she crouched down again against the pillar, and lying thus her senses left her.
When they came back it was daylight, and from the heap of ashes that had been the Temple of Herod and the most glorious building in the whole world, rose a thick cloud of black smoke, pierced here and there by little angry tongues of fire.

The Court of Israel was strewn so thick with dead that in places the soldiers walked on them as on a carpet, or to be rid of them, hurled them into the smouldering ruins.